DehNutCase Posted February 15, 2020 Author Share Posted February 15, 2020 Camp: Spoiler No Monastery means no certification tests and also no food buffs, you also don't get to buy any smithing materials, but that's not too much of a big deal since Part 2 will fix everything and the shops are upgraded to their final forms at this point. (Aside from Anna's secret shop.) Camp: Some supports. Byleth & Edelgard have a bond support, so its a nice bonus on the very rare occasion they end up in the same place. These are all time gated supports, I believe. Hubert comes back with Vestra Sorcery Engineers, which have 2 radius AoE gambit as you can see, and also -2 Str, +7 Mag, +10 Avo, +4 Def, +6 Res, +7 Charm at max level, so more or less an endgame battalion that you can use at C Authority. (I don't think Hubert had C Authority yet, so as a minor bonus the game bumped up his Authority to C as well.) Magical Battalions tend to give less stats than physical ones (unless you count something like Gloucester Knights as magical), so Vestra Sorcery Engineers is basically as good as it gets on the magical side. Edelgard would have gotten this, but she's on a Pegasus so it fell off. Like Vestra, Supreme Armored Co. is basically an endgame battalion you can equip at C Authority. It gets 7 Str, 6 Mag, 5 Hit, -10 Avoid, 6 Defense, 5 Resistance, and 10 Charm at max level, so pretty amazing mixed stats in exchange for a small penalty to avoid. Raging Flames is also pretty great as a gambit with 15 MT, 2 uses, and a huge hit-box. As you can see, the item shop upgraded to max level, and you can buy Master Seals now (and unlimited Advanced). Don't worry about the Limited amount, Anna's shop sells unlimited Master Seals later on in Part 2. (As a minor quality of life thing it's better to leave the 5 master seals in the item shop so you can buy them on demand if needed, since you need to go exploring to use Anna's secret shop, but only if it wouldn't delay tests.) The battalion guild also upgraded, and we pick up Black Eagle Pegasus Co. for Edelgard. The gambit is Retribution, meaning you probably don't want it on your primary damage dealer (since the gambit doesn't work on the person using it), but its stats boosts are about what you'd expect from an A rank battalion at 7 Strength, 10 Crit, 10 Avoid, 5 Defense, 7 Resistance, and 10 Charm. Shamir gets a B rank Wyvern battalion to replace her C rank one. At max level Empire Elite Wyverns give 8 Str, -2 Mag, 10 crit, 6 Defense, and 7 Charm. Pretty great, but very focused, so you probably won't want it on people who want mixed stats. I don't buy this battalion since I don't really need it, but it gives a single use of guaranteed Miracle for 4 allies (maybe 5? I'm not sure if it works on the user or not), which is pretty useful if you don't have a lot of uses of Divine Pulse. (Or if you really needed to lure something and can't afford to use the 1 damage dealt, 1 damage taken gambit.) It doesn't have a turn limit, either. The stats are -2 Str, 6 Mag, 4 Def, 7 Res, and 8 Charm. Not amazing, but not bad, about what you'd expect from a B rank battalion. The armory also upgraded, and we buy 1 brave weapon of each type. (Which is all you can get from the shop.) Unfortunately the only person who can use Brave Axes right now is Alois, but that doesn't matter too much. Buying all the new stuff left us a little strapped for cash, so we sell all our Bullion for some cash. We end up at about 30k gold after all the buying and selling. Not much to do in camp aside from shopping and chatting with people, so off we go. Map: Spoiler Suggested Level: 25 We're still over-leveled, but the finale of Part 2 is where units start getting Part 2 stats. And the main thing you need to know about part 2 stats is that all your back-liners get ORKOd. By everything. Pre-map Planning: Map for the first half. If you go in through the front gates an annoying ambush will spawn, but you don't have to go in that way. Aside from that the mooks pretty much just wait for you to walk up and kill them, meaning the first half is pretty trivial. If you have someone who's heavily invested they can probably just go in the front door and kill everyone who popped out to ambush them. Map for the second half. If you have people lagging behind near the bottom of the map some Pegasus Knight reinforcements will spawn, meaning things will get pretty hectic pretty fast, since enemy mooks will run towards you from both sides, but if you're like me and happened to have all your units forward then the Pegasus Knights don't spawn and the enemy mooks basically feed themselves into a meat grinder. If you're looking for exp you should probably run down and pick up the extra reinforcement exp, but it doesn't really matter much either way. This map feels kind of like a warm up to get you used to part 2 unit stats. Enemy stats are high, but aside from the pair of ambushes possibly costing you a Divine Pulse or two the mooks pretty much just wait around for you to smack them for exp. 38 Atk, 22 Speed. Even Fortress Knight bases (35 hp, 17 Def) aren't enough by themselves to survive a double at this point, although between battalions and shields you can still face tank people with Defense rather than avoid tanking with Speed. Armors are going to be armors, although they do have 10 Speed now. People like Lorenz who tend to walk around with 0 AS are getting doubled, and your mages will start having issues doubling armors if they didn't keep up with speed growths. Still not a threat because they're 4 move melee units, but something to keep in mind. Not sure why these heal tile Mercenaries exist, to be honest. 39 Atk is pretty good, 27 AS is great, but they never move off their heal tiles so they're mostly just their to kill off your ally units. (Who you don't need to keep alive anyway.) Gilbert has some... interesting stats. 54 Atk is pretty decent, but 0 AS and being completely immobile means he's just a exp pinata waiting for you to smack him. He does have Aegis and Pavise, so be careful if you're trying to OHKO to avoid the counter damage, since he might half his damage taken and smack you back. Also note that he nullifies armor effectiveness, but between magic damage and Relics that doesn't really matter. He has a battalion, it doesn't matter. Enemy Pegasus Knights took off their kid gloves, so they have 44 Atk and 32 AS now, meaning they double everyone on your entire team (except maybe the one person you force fed like 20 Speed Carrots to), and probably ORKOs them to boot. Defenses are also stellar at 24 Def, 25 Res, and even 25 Charm to make gambits from people who aren't that charming a bit unreliable. An archer with enough Strength can probably OHKO with a Silver Bow, but Brave Bows are probably your best bet to handle fliers at this point. (Aside from, you know, the Byleth solution.) And here's Flayn on the right side, she has 56 magic Atk. Which is enough to OHKO a lot of my units. If you didn't do her Paralogue she would have the +1 range staff here, meaning you'd need 4 range to hit her without taking a counter. Watch out for the miracle + Defiant Magic combo if you're depending on killing her to avoid getting killed yourself. Her battalion is pretty sweet, although the gambit doesn't matter too much. (Since she's perfectly capable of killing you with Seraphim.) And here's Seteth. He has Cichol Wyvern Co. equipped, so his accuracy, Atk, Crit, and Defense are all stellar, but the fact that we did his Paralogue means that he uses a Silver Lance rather than the Spear of Assal, which would've added a little more damage, cavalry effectiveness, and 10% more crit chance. Nullify flying effectiveness means you can't just OHKO him with a Silver Bow, but he still dies pretty quickly to Brave Bow users, especially since 23 AS is low enough that you can probably double him with having to chug Speed Carrots. Part 2 starts once you have defeated Flayn, Seteth, and Gilbert, I believe. Here's the part 2 map. A minor note on Part 2, if you have units near the bottom of the map a bunch of Pegasus Knights will spawn there---remember that they have 44 Atk and 32 AS. Anyone not named Byleth is pretty much 100% dead to 2 Pegasus Knights, and most of them are dead to a single Pegasus Knight. This is assuming you aren't into using armors, though. Fortress Knights (as in, people actually in the class) would still have enough defense to shrug off Physical damage for a while yet. I ended up not triggering them since it would've been a hassle to send someone down just for some reinforcement exp. Here's the monsters on this map, they do magic damage so be a little bit careful with combat math. 12 AS and 108 hit means they're not too threatening, though. The Snipers have basically the same stats are the Archers from the first half, oddly enough. They do have 1 more Str and Bowfaire so they hit a bit harder, but they have the same 22 AS so they're not too worrying---just be careful about Vantage. This guy has a Blessed Bow, so make time to pick it up unless you're doing some LTC stuff. 29 Atk, 26 AS. Not bad, but most of your units should survive a single round without a problem. Catherine has a ORKO on my hilariously invested Byleth if she manages to land both hits, just bear that in mind before you put someone in range of her. She's still a 1 range, 5 move unit, though. Healer with healer stats. Cavaliers with passable stats. 41 Atk, 21 AS isn't bad, but their bulk is way worse than Pegasus Knights in both directions, especially considering how easy they are to double. And we see a generic Paladin, finally. With ass for stats. Pegasus Knights have 44 Atk, 32 AS, 24 Defense, and 25 Resistance, just bear that in mind while looking at this guy's stats. I have no idea why they waited until now before putting generic Paladins into the enemy lineup. Their mobility is worse than enemy Pegasus Knights since 1 move isn't worth flying mobility, and they don't even get better stats in exchange. Here's Cyril, pretty great stats with 59 Atk, 30 AS, and 39 Crit. Unlike Seteth he doesn't negate flying effectiveness so any half decent archer will shoot him out of the sky without problems. Here's the first of our ally mooks. 47 Atk, 21 AS, not bad, not interesting. He's on the left side. Ladislava is a Cavalier, with the expected crappy stats. On the right side we have a dark mage, who's probably going to die the moment enemy phase starts. And also Randolph. He's pretty easy to keep alive if you remember to toss him some heals (AI really doesn't like hanging back and chugging Concoctions to stay alive), but it's not a big deal if you just let him die. Having some ally mooks alive makes baiting people like Seteth or Cyril easier, but even if you needed to do that you can just let the Death Knight do it---the Death Knight joins as an ally mook once we defeat Flayn. Here's our lineup, Ferdinand is stapled to Linhardt, Leonie holding a Knowledge Gem to Byleth, and Caspar with an Experience Gem to Dorothea. Leonie is probably better to have on the team than Lorenz, but she can be stapled to Byleth for exp and Lorenz can't, so this way is a bit more efficient for exp. Replenishing some battalions. Kind wish they'd let us just replenish every single battalion at once rather than splitting them into equipped and not equipped. We buy Byleth a Killer Lance since they're pretty good for general purpose use, at least for someone like Byleth. Note that she has the Brave Sword we bought during camp. Edelgard doesn't have the Axe rank to equip the Brave Axe we bought, so she gets the Brave Lance. Hubert is forced, which is a pretty weird design choice after making him go AWOL for a month. We don't have any interesting accessories for him so I give him a Magic Staff. Shamir picks up the new Brave Bow we bought. Lorenz gets Supreme Armored Co. since he likes battalions with mixed stats and he doesn't have B rank for Gloucester. I might just give him Supreme Armored Co. for the rest of the game, which will let me invest his skill exp somewhere other than Authority. Dorothea gets Special Dance by dropping Authority. Lorenz drops Desperation. (For nothing, because Desperation is actually less useful than having the slot free in case Lorenz gets a skill in the middle of the map.) Leonie isn't in the team, but I swap Break Shot in for Curved Shot since it deals a bit more damage and accuracy isn't really an issue for her. The Map: We're having Byleth fly in through the front door since she's a wall of stats, but first we buff her up. Infinite range counters. Byleth flies to the middle and Waits to activate Alert Stance. Dance to give Byleth another turn & buff her with Special Dance. And Linhardt Warps her a bit forward. I wasn't sure what kind of enemies are going to pop out, so I had Byleth use a Killer Lance. (Not sure why it's this generic mook talking rather than Seteth---I guess on the off chance you killed Seteth before triggering the ambush? But in that case the armor mook might be dead too.) And here's the enemy mooks. The two axe mooks have Lancebreaker, so it's a bit better to be holding a sword right now, but Byleth has very good odds of survival even with a lance. (If she died here I would've tried again with a Sword, and if she died again I would have went through one of the side entrances.) Lorenz stops just outside the armor mooks range, since he's slow enough to get doubled by them. Hubert uses Draw Back on Bernadetta. For some hail mary pokes. The hit lands and Bernadetta flies over here. Not much else to do so Lysithea and Shamir head right. End of turn 1. As you can see, Counterattack doesn't let you counter Ballista (and probably not the magical tower things or catapults either). The 1% crit is annoying, but Divine Pulse means you don't have to worry too much about low crit chances that might kill you. (If you're really worried or don't want to use Divine Pulses you could just grab that Miracle battalion.) Enemy Phase combat. And the pain train starts. I think the armors are attacking first since they're not guaranteed to die (if they manage to avoid 2 52% crits and also Byleth's Crest procs then they can survive with 4 hp). Note the armor on the left actually did manage to survive a round of Byleth. Doop. The mage goes for Dorothea since attacking Byleth with Counterattack is pretty damn stupid. 36 damage is worrying, 7% hit isn't. Axe mooks have non-negligible accuracy thanks to Lancebreaker, but there's only 2 axe mooks and 21 * 2 isn't enough to kill Byleth even if they managed two 30% hits. (This is pretty much the rest of the game from now on, Byleth goes somewhere, Byleth kills everyone.) I would like some more Strength, but the level has Speed so it's a good level. C+ Flying for Leonie. The reason the Dark Mage dies pretty much immediately is because he's 2RKOd but ORKOs the armors, meaning he'll KO one and then die to the next one, whereas if he didn't ORKO then the first armor would body block the other ones. More enemy phase. R.I.P. dark mage, no idea why you were so far forward. Ally phase combat. Ditto. (Randolph's combat is pretty great for an ally mook.) And this guy somehow misses with his axe, so he dies to the armor knight counter... Bernadetta pokes this mook and tries to get her Personal active. She Cantos right after the fight and Hubert comes in to nab some exp. For a great level. I might actually use a pair of Dark Seals on him to get him level 20 bases, since he doesn't really need Warlock for anything and the Dark Seals are just sitting in my convoy anyway. He only has B Reason right now, though, so I'll need to get him to B+. Byleth things. 27 Speed is pretty great, but the sad thing is that enemy Pegasus Knight still have a guaranteed double against that... (Bloody 32 AS.) Byleth heads left to start luring Pegasus Knights, since she's the only one who can handle them reliably. Shaky KO, but Edelgard manages. Lorenz grabs some exp. Lorenz Cantos forward, and Annette nabs some exp as well. Linhardt things. (Keeping mages topped off is more about having them survive Ballista bolts than anything else at this point, since physical units will pretty much always ORKO.) Dancer exp farming. Linhardt heads left and also tosses Dorothea a heal. (I would've liked to keep Randolph alive since he's pretty useful for an ally mook, but it's not high enough priority for me to make Linhardt go right rather than left.) The healing exp gets Ferdinand Desperation. I should really move him off Cavalier so he doesn't take penalties to his Speed Growths, but min-maxing my benched units isn't that important. Not much action right side, but Shamir does get a poke in with the ballista. Interesting that you can Arm Ballistae while mounted, usually they don't let you do that. She Cantos a little bit forward (but still out of enemy range) afterwards. End of turn 2. Enemy Phase combat. Ally Phase combat. (I really wish Randolph would be smart and just chug a concoction whenever he's not full hp, but the AI would much rather suicide than back off and heal...) Doop. Exp farming. It has magic so it's fine, honestly. 14 Speed means she'll have issues doubling armors soon, but I'm fine with Annette only having 2RKOs on things, since combat isn't her main job. Byleth flies over to lure another Pegasus Knight + get some chip damage in vs. Gilbert. Lorenz goes over here so he can help left if needed or start working his way middle otherwise. Dance exp farming. Hubert makes his way towards the middle of the map. Linhardt grabs some healing exp. In retrospect, I should've sent Edelgard right since having both Byleth and Edelgard on the same side is kind of a waste. Oh well, Lysithea slowly makes her way towards Flayn. (She's the only one on the right side who doesn't die instantly to Flayn's Seraphim.) Farming some exp with the Ballista. Bernadetta Cantos up after the ballista, and Shamir flies a bit up as well. End of turn 3. Enemy Phase combat. Byleth managed a crit, but Gilbert proc'd Pavise on both hits so he only ends up losing 24 hp. Doop. Doop. (The armor exploded, by the way.) And, for some reason, our ally mooks seem to be hard coded to go for Gilbert/Flayn, even though it's stupid as hell. (Ally Phase combat.) Poke. Dead. Linhardt things. Hubert walks over here and then Dorothea dances him. Not much for the people middle to do until Byleth is free to lure more mooks over, though, since everyone other than her would probably explode to Seteth. Poke. Shamir goes over here to lure the Armor Knight. Byleth doesn't have a guaranteed kill on Gilbert so I swap in the crit ring to make the ORKO a bit more likely. Bear in mind that Gilbert has Pavise, so even with a crit this KO is a bit shaky. We do manage the KO, though. Doop. And doop. End of Turn 4. Enemy Phase combat. And Randolph... explodes. Without even denting Flayn. If I had someone here to top him off (or if he would just drink a bloody concoction), then he can survive a hit from Flayn, but no, he just runs in to die. (Ally Phase combat.) Oh well, at least we didn't need to keep our ally mooks alive on this map. Doop. And doop. (Bernadetta Canto'd over after her combat.) Very disappointing level, but it'll take a lot of those before Shamir stops being one of my best units. Annette things. I was considering letting Edelgard Repo Byleth forward after ending the turn here, and then dancing Byleth to have her fight Seteth, but ended up playing things safe. Middle ended up just being a lot of Waits and Dorothea dancing Hubert for dance exp. Basically an empty level, but eh. Doop. Linhardt things. Ferdinand gets C Riding. (One reason to keep him in Cavalier, I guess, since it gets him into Paladin easier.) End of turn 5. Enemy Phase combat. We swap back to the Evasion Ring since damage mitigation matters more than crit chance against most targets. Note that I'm using Luin---32 AS, Lv.5 Prowess, and +10 Avoid means Pegasus Knights are pretty good at dodging things, but Luin has good accuracy in exchange for being one of the lower MT Relics. Still playing things safe mid. Linhardt walks over here and Dorothea does dancer things. Flayn hits like a truck so we end up just sniping her from 3 range. Doop. And doop. And the Death Knight pops in once Flayn is defeated. This isn't from the turn he spawned, but here's his stats. They're... pretty outrageous. I should mention that Jeritza's stats aren't this good, although they'll still be amazing. More on that once Jeritza joins us, though. Bernadetta leveled up from defeating Flayn, but I missed the screenshot. I believe she got +1 Speed, +1 Luck, +1 Charm,. Not a bad level, but she could really use some more Strength at this point. I'll probably need to have her focusing Bows for a while to pick up Bowfaire for her. Pretty much just Seteth left for part 1 of this map. Enemy Phase combat. (The Armor Knight spawned in range of this Pegasus Knight.) Ally Phase combat. (For some reason, the Death Knight moved first, and the armor was body blocking him from reaching the Pegasus Knight, so the Pegasus Knight actually ends up living through the Ally Phase.) Doop. Right side moves closer to Seteth. Lorenz moves over and Annette buffs Byleth a bit. Activating Alert Stance. Special Dance. And Byleth does Byleth things. Which triggers Part 2. I was a bit worried about Pegasus Knight reinforcements coming from behind, so I have Byleth Canto back. Linhardt does some patching up. Getting Ferdinand a pretty decent level. Edelgard shifts around a bit and Hubert drags Dorothea out of harm's way. End of turn 7. Enemy Phase combat. This sure was a level. (Getting both Speed and Luck is pretty great for bulk, since magic is really the only thing with halfway decent accuracy against Byleth.) I'd like her to get even more Strength, but 34 + Falcon Knight bonuses + future Energy Drops should be more than enough for the rest of the game already. One nice thing about Brave Swords is that they're almost as strong as Silvers. Pity Pegasus Knight's Swordbreaker means their accuracy is pretty shaky. (Too bad Counterattack only lasts 5 turns.) Ally Phase combat. This one is weak to lances, so the Death Knight even helped us break a barrier. Doop. I would've liked to have Lorenz target the square above this one instead, since that would get the other monster in the AoE as well, but he didn't have the reach. Edelgard buffs Byleth up with Counterattack again. Activating Alert Stance. Special Dance. And I have Byleth Swap to Creator Sword before using Assault Troop for a bit of extra avoid. These guys also drop Mythril, so I should have enough for Gradivus once we find the rare monster that drops it. Byleth moves over here to bodyblock the other monster from reaching us. Linhardt things. I have no idea why he's so fast. (Seriously, he has only 2 less Speed than Magic---although part of that is because he's Mag screwed.) 19 still means he's doubled by everything that isn't an armor, but it should be enough to double armors for the rest of the game. The red threat tile is a ballista, so I feel safe dragging Annette forward with Hubert. Poke. Dead. Turn 8 ends like this. (I didn't show what Lysithea did, but all she did was walk forward---one of the down sides of being 4 movement.) Enemy Phase combat. (That 1% crit...) The Death Knight is pretty amazing at stealing kills... (Ally Phase combat.) Byleth flies back to activate Alert Stance & be in range for Stride. Doop. Special Dance. Bows really should have gotten a damage drop off rather than an accuracy drop off to make the flier v. archer matchup work properly. (Or better yet, not have a penalty for attacking at range at all---it's not like the game has problems with people having Meteor or Bolting.) And Leonie gets a great level from being stapled to Byleth. You need pretty absurd Speed to avoid doubles consistently on Maddening, but Leonie might actually get there. Canto. Dragging this thing towards the team. In retrospect, I should've just sent Bernadetta to Lure as the first move, since now the thing's close enough that Dorothea prevents the Lure. Breaking the last barrier. Low rolls on Mythril, but I'm not expecting to be able to repair Gradivus after forging it, so it doesn't really matter as long as I get my 10. Lorenz manages a crit, so the thing goes to its last hp bar. Exp farming. Ditto. End of turn 9. Enemy Phase combat. I guess you can use things like Fire Orbs or Ballista to get some free damage in against enemy mooks with Counterattack, but I never remember about them. I'm not 100% sure, but I think Rhea is actually in range to get bombarded by this Fire Orb and the Ballista on the opposite side? Spooky accuracy, spooky damage, but it's vs. Edelgard, not Byleth. Enemy Phase combat. Max range Sniping is a pretty terrible idea versus Counterattack Byleth. B+ Swords. And the Death Knight steals another kill, r.i.p exp. This was 200+ hp of exp and 2 monster kills. :*( Byleth flies back towards the team. And we give her the usual buffs. Doop. Amazing level, although it doesn't matter too much on a Dancer. (Unless you do some weird stuff like picking up Dancer for exp & Sword Avo. +20 and then swapping into Falcon Knight afterwards.) Exp farming. Edelgard repo's Byleth a bit to the left. And doop. (Without all the buffs Byleth is actually in danger of being ORKOd by Catherine's counter, although admittedly that's not very likely since Catherine's accuracy is shaky.) End of turn 10. Enemy Phase combat. (This lands, incidentally.) *shrug* Miss. And miss. Even with gambit debuffs Byleth is kind of stupid. There was a mook walking towards us from the left side, so the Death Knight goes to take care of it. Restore to give Byleth her movement back. Doop. Canto. Dancer things. Linhardt things. And Hubert drags Dorothea out of danger range. Exp farming. D+ Faith. Doop. End of turn 11. Enemy Phase combat. Ditto. Linhardt warps Byleth forward. And we pick up a blessed bow. With 6 MT you don't really use Blessed Bow for the damage, it's pretty much just to help you break barriers if you don't have a gambit ready. I move Bernadetta over here and Stride her so that Edelgard gets +5 movement. Edelgard flies here and gets danced. The ORKO fails, unfortunately, but oh well. Thanks to the Stride Edelgard can retreat to a safe spot. Exp farming. Lorenz moves forward. End of turn 12. Enemy Phase combat. Byleth things. Using Knighkneeler for a bit of accuracy. And Edelgard gets a pretty amazing level from the kill. Canto. Doop. Exp farming. Ditto. Lysithea should be set on Mag for the rest of the game now, although if she keeps getting Magic she might reach the point where she OHKOs things consistently. More exp farming. Everyone shuffles forward and Dorothea dancers Bernadetta. For some Hail Mary chip damage. And she hides behind Byleth to be safe. Another turn and the Death Knight will start stealing the last kills on the map, so we need to finish things up now. Enemy Phase combat. This lands, meaning Byleth can't move. It's technically possible for Lorenz to die here, but very unlikely. Restore to get Byleth moving again. Doop. And doop. Strength is good. Last minute exp farming. Alert Stance. Special Dance. And Byleth does Byleth things. And at this point I realize I forgot to take a screenshot of Rhea's stats, sorry. :S A pretty mediocre level to end Part 1, but eh. Not sure MVP matters. Pretty sure motivation is reset to 50 once Part 2 starts, but I guess we'll see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted February 15, 2020 Author Share Posted February 15, 2020 Oh cool, got into a new page, I think I'll start splitting updates into separate posts so that a page doesn't take 30 minutes to load. ...And I just realized I said it's Chapter 12 into the previous post, but yeah, it's Chapter 12. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted February 21, 2020 Author Share Posted February 21, 2020 (edited) Chapter 13: Academy: Spoiler I used to think this was just a flat +1 level to everyone other than Byleth, but after double checking levels that's not actually what it does. (More on this when I talk about Edelgard.) Also, I haven't seen anyone other than Edelgard class change from this, yet, although maybe they require you to have 100% chance to get into a level 20 class before automatically class changing. Jeritza isn't as good as his NPC Death Knight counterpart, but he still comes in with better stats than everyone except Byleth. Part of that is because Death Knight has some crazy stat boosts, though, so he's a bit weaker if you swap him out of it for more mobility. Time gated supports are mostly unlocked now, so we have a bit of supports for Byleth to chew through. Everyone did, in fact, reset to 50 Motivation like I remembered, so these are nice to save me some gifts/meal sharing. B rank for Alois. Maybe the choice is there for people who want to play the ultra-masochist version of Three Houses where they only play the story maps? (As in, they use the skip function to skip past every single free day and event.) Lorenz and Linhardt. Choir isn't that useful these days but it's still a bit of free Faith exp for everyone involved, and Linhardt happens to actually care about faith. (He won't learn any more spells but A+ gives Faith Prowess level 5, and S gives Faith range +1. S+ gives White Tomfaire, but Holy Knight has that anyway.) A rank support with Bernadetta + motivation refill. Interesting that the final tier of shop wasn't tied to this, but to the end of Part 1. Free Master Seal. Some supports. This is actually slightly less A ranks than I expected, but a lot of Edelgard's supports are time gated, even in part 2. Not sure why Falcon Knight only needs B+ Flying, considering you have 20 whole levels to get it, whereas Wyvern Lord needs A Flying and only 10 levels (if you're coming in from Wyvern Rider). Seriously, the Pegasus Knight line has so many random tiny perks despite being the class that ends up with the most mobility and the most stats. Who balanced this class line? Tried to Brigand Ferdinand to make him a bit more efficient at being an adjunct bot. (Since it has better growths + a way better skill.) But it failed. Next time I play Three Houses I'm probably going to be a bit more on the ball about getting my adjunct bots Brigand. Getting Ferdinand fighter to advance his RNG counter. I'm only testing Warlock to see if Dorothea would get any stats out of it, but this fails as well. (I don't bother advancing Dorothea's RNG counter, though, since stats isn't really high priority for her.) I was slightly worried Part 2 wouldn't repair everything in Byleth's inventory, but turns out that wasn't a problem. Even completely broken weapons got repaired as long as they were in someone's inventory. An Iron Bow I left in convoy (to double check that it's only equipped weapons that get repaired) wasn't repaired, so it's definitely based on unit inventory. Also, people with empty inventories end up with a free Iron Weapon, which is interesting. I'd like Byleth to get 20 more Speed or so from what she has right now, but she can probably handle the entire rest of the route with only the stats she has now and Alert Stance+. Here's Edelgard, she changed into Armored Lord, but 5 move classes with mediocre stats isn't something I'm looking for. She gets Amyr for free and it's basically the axe version of Lance of Ruin. (Hell, they even share the 'get for free part.') Imperial Lineage+ makes Alert Stance even more efficient since it gives Edelgard Rally Resistance (so it doesn't stack with Annette being Annette) when she uses Wait, but at this point even Edelgard is getting ORKOd by the more dangerous enemies, so defensive stat boosts aren't too important. Some notes on time-skip mechanics: Armored Lord gives 5 hp, -3 Speed, 5 Def, 2 Charm, so Edelgard's real stats are 45 hp, 23 Speed, 19 Defense, and 32 Charm. (She also only has 11 Luck because she's wearing a Goddess Ring.) Pegasus Knight gives +2 Dex, +3 Speed, +2 Res when mounted, and the last time we saw Edelgard, at level 25 (she got two levels from the timeskip), Edelgard had 43 hp, 27 Str, 18 Mag, 16 Dex, 25 Speed, 11 Luck, 19 Def, 14 Res, and 31 Charm. Correcting for Pegasus Knight Edelgard had 14 Dex, 22 Speed, 12 Res. So she got 2 Hp, 2 Str, 1 Mag, 0 Dex, 1 Speed, 0 Luck, 0 Defense, 0 Resistance, and 1 Charm from the timeskip. This suggests that everyone just gets random levels from the time skip, since if it was manual levels they'd probably just give Edelgard 2 levels and +1 to everything. And not everyone got levels from the timeskip, Bernadetta was level 25 in Part 1 and level 25 now, suggesting that there's a level cutoff for getting levels from the timeskip. The level cutoff is also different for Faculty and Students, since Shamir was also level 25 at the end of Part 1, but level 26 now. We swap Edelgard to Wyvern Lord since Part 2 enemy stats means being able to kill things on player phase is a lot more important (so the +1 movement matters), and she does need a bit more axe exp to hold Brave Axes. The better bulk helps a little, but she's in danger of ORKOs just like everyone else in the lineup regardless of whether I swap her to Wyvern or Pegasus. And here's Jeritza. He's 6 levels lower than his NPC counterpart, who was level 33 the last time we saw him, and losing those 6 levels cost him 4 Str, 7 mag (wtf) 6 Dex, 5 Speed, 7 Luck (wtf), 4 Def, 9 Resistance (are you fucking joking), and 6 Charm. So yeah, NPC Jeritza apparently has over 100% growths. That said, Jeritza is already about as strong as Edelgard in terms of stats and has better growths to boot, and you can probably tell from his Prowess levels that his skill ranks are sky high. Edelgard does have flying mobility, though, and a lot of Jeritza's stats comes from Death Knight, so they're basically tied for the #2 spot. Death Knight has Counterattack as its mastery skill, incidentally. Pity you need to force feed people like 20 Speed Carrots for enemy phase combats to be viable in Part 2. Scythe of Sariel is basically a super light Killer Lance, but aside from that he also comes with a free Silver Sword and Dark Seal. Dark Seal is more or less vendor trash, like I said before, but at least this gives us an even number of them in case anyone actually cared about Dark Bishop. Jeritza has the save uses on healing spells Crest, which only matters in that it lets him use Relics without taking a 10 hp penalty every combat. (The 10 hp penalty doesn't matter at all, honestly. Basically everyone gets ORKOd from full hp in part 2, so who cares how much hp you have. Hell, it even makes it easier to activate Defiant skills.) Basically A rank swords, A+ lances, C+ Axes, Brawling (lul), A Riding, and B Authority. These sure are some bases, is all I'm going to say. He's weak in Authority but starting at B rank means that doesn't matter at all. Jeritza also has Mastermind (just unequipped) to fix that exp issue if you cared about getting A rank battalions. He has a hidden talent in Flying, so I'll probably try to get Wyvern for him. I'm fine with him staying Death Knight for the rest of the game, though, so getting Wyvern is just a 'if it works out' kind of thing. One minor note is that Death Knight is a caster class, so he has magic access, but his spells are pretty boring. (He does get a pair of 1-3 range spells in Reason, but that's all he gets aside from Thunder, and his Faith line caps out at Restore.) I did a bunch of goal changes, mostly swapping out of Authority and into whatever skill they need for promotion. Jeritza's working on Axes and Flying, but even if he doesn't get enough exp to go Wyvern it doesn't really matter. He could get 0 skill exp the rest of the game and be perfectly fine. Exploration: Only have 1 exploration day this month, but that's alright. Quest Stuff: Both of these are combat quests, I believe, so they'll just sit in the quest log forever. Non-quest Stuff: 5 Nordsalat and a Speed Carrot, which is pretty amazing RNG. So we do a full 5 seed planting session. And more of the usual. Support stuff: Byleth has a ton of support points with everyone, so I run around picking up A ranks. And B ranks. Saves me some money/time depending on whether I was going to buy gifts or share meals to get their motivation up. I buyout the 2 highest tiers of bait and the 100g gifts, as usual. Cooking with Edelgard. You really shouldn't be allowed to ride horses into a Sword Tournament, honestly. It's actually a bit iffy to win tournaments at this point since Edelgard and Jeritza both suffer from low Luck, meaning they occasionally lose matches to crits. I had to reset once to get the Silver Sword+. Faculty can train you in their Strengths regardless of what level they have in that skill, just like during Part 1. Not sure why I'm bothering with Lance rank, to be honest. The last level of Prowess will come naturally and I don't care about Lancefaire or Lance Crit. Sword rank matters, though, since Falcon Knight doesn't have Swordfaire and Sword Prowess is dope on an avoid tank. Interesting thing about Invite to Tea---even after you successfully complete a tea party, you can still invite the same person. It only grays out if they reject your invitation. The first party was Nice, with +1 Charm for Byleth and Jeritza. Nice, and +1 Charm for both Byleth and Shamir. I tried reset spamming a few more tea parties, but none of them gave Charm regardless of who I had the tea party with and what kind of result it was, which suggests your first 2 tea parties have the highest chance of increasing Charm and the Charm you can get is probably capped. So I finished the day off with some meal sharing. Doop. Offscreen I gave people a bunch of gifts to get them to 100 motivation. That was it for the day, and Ingrid ended up getting enough support points to rank up in terms of support. Which was a bit unfortunate, but whatever. She's A ranked with Byleth, now. This one passes, and I swap him into Brigand. This basically wraps up the academy phase. Notes on Timeskip Levelups: Spoiler (Everyone has +1 Speed from food buffs, just bear that in mind.) Ingrid is level 22, which means either I messed up recording her level ups or she got 2 levels during the time skip. This was from when I last had her on Adjunct duty, I believe. If she got 2 levels during the timeskip then she ended up getting 1 HP, 2 Str, 2 Mag, 0 Dex, 2 Speed, 0 Luck, 0 Def, 2 Res, and 0 Charm in 2 levels. Caspar doesn't have the skill ranks to get into Wyvern, but we're more interesting in his timeskip stats right now. Namely, the fact that I either fucked up tremendously getting his level up screenshots or he somehow got 3 levels during the time skip. They were some crappy levels, though, since he only got 3 HP, 1 Str, 1 Mag, 2 Dex, 1 Speed, 0 Luck, 1 Def, 1 Res, and 2 Charm. Meaning he under-rolled Strength and Speed. 20 base Strength & Death Blow means he's extremely likely to make the team once I get him on a Wyvern regardless, but that's neither here nor there. I'd say the weird amount of level ups is probably due to me being bad at screenshots, but the fact that Bernadetta is level 25 before and after timeskip suggests there's some kind of wonkiness in how the timeskip levelups work. Like Caspar, Annette also seemed to get 3 levels. This was when we last saw her, I believe. Now, I can believe that I fucked up with screenshots, but getting this much wrong is pretty unlikely. She got 1 HP, 0 Str, 3 Mag, 2 Dex, 1 Speed, 0 Luck, 0 Def, 2 Res, and 1 Charm in 3 levels, so they were pretty good. (And the distribution again suggests the game just rolls 3 random levels for timeskip stats.) And here's Lorenz, also level 24. This I know is correct, since it was one of the last levelups from Part 1, so he definitely got 2 levels. If I had to guess, then my guess would be that units get levelups based on either their support points with Byleth or how often they've been in the main lineup, but only up to a certain level. Lorenz ended up getting 1 HP, 1 Str, 1 Mag, 1 Dex, 1 Speed, 0 Luck, 1 Def, 0 Res, and 0 Charm in 2 levels. Not great, but serviceable. Lysithea is the truly strange one, though. We know Bernadetta is level 25 both pre and post timeskip, but Lysithea somehow got 3 levels to level 27. This makes sense if the game only applies timeskip levelups if you're below level 25, but that's pretty brutal since it also lets you get multiple timeskip levels. I'll need to play a lot more playthroughs of Three Houses to be certain, but for now it looks like the optimal level for students to end up in is level 24, so that they get 2 or 3 levelups into level 26 or 27. This was when we last saw Lysithea. She got 3 HP, 0 Str, 0 Mag (seriously?), 2 Dex, 1 Speed, 0 Luck, 0 Def, 0 Res, and 0 Charm. So yeah, she basically got 3 empty levels. This is either crazy bad RNG or timeskip levelups bugging out. It's also possible that the timeskip simply forces people closer to their stat averages, which would make this result and Ingrid's make more sense. Lysithea had better than average levelups, so she ended up getting basically nothing from the timeskip, whereas Ingrid was Strength screwed, so she got 2 points in 2 levels. The flaw in this theory is that Lysithea has jack all for hp, so she wasn't supposed to get 3 points of HP in 3 levels. My guess is still pure RNG for timeskip levelups, and Lysithea just had some awful rolls. Alois got a single level, which is expected. Not going to bother comparing his stats since it's not interesting. Likewise, Shamir also got a single level. Here was when we last saw her. (She's on the main team so I'm looking at her stats.) She got 0 HP, 0 Str, 1 Mag, 0 Dex, 1 Speed, 0 Luck, 0 Def, 0 Res, and 1 Charm. Again suggesting pure RNG for levelups. The fact that she got a level despite being at level 25 suggests the level cap for timeskip levels is different between faculty and students. The fact that she only gets 1 level suggests that how many levels you get also has a different formula between faculty and students. That said, Shamir only has B rank support with Byleth, so it's also possible she just doesn't have enough support points to get multiple levels. I swapped Edelgard back to Pegasus Knight to look at her stats and compare. Here's when we saw her last, with a pretty great level. She ended up getting 2 HP, 2 Str, 1 Mag, 0 Dex, 1 Speed, 0 Luck, 0 Def, 0 Res, and 1 Charm in 2 levels. Great levels, considering how part 2 works, but with all of this levelup data I'm pretty sure at this point that timeskip levelups are just pure RNG. I didn't think to take screenshots of my permanently benched people, but Raphael was level 19 in part 1, (I'm pretty sure he didn't get a levelup in the single map I did with him, his own Paralogue), and he's level 21 now. That's 2 levels during the timeskip, and he has B rank support with Byleth, which suggest you get 1 level for nothing or C, 2 levels for B, and 3 levels if you have enough support points to reach A rank once part 2 starts. I didn't take a stat screenshot of Leonie, but this one before I deployed for the map gives us her level, which is 27. Earlier in this update she reached A rank with Byleth, so if I'm right she should've been level 24 before timeskip. And this was the last screenshot I had of her. Meaning I royally fucked up getting Bernadetta to level 25, since it made her miss out on 2 levels. Oh well, something to keep in mind for later playthroughs. tl;dr is that Faculty seem to get 1 level no matter what, whereas students below level 25 (that is, level 1-24) get 3 levels if they have enough support points to A rank support with Byleth, 2 levels for B rank support with Byleth, and 1 level otherwise. Levelup stats also seem to be random. Edit: Actually, the amount of levels don't seem to be based on support points with Byleth, since Ferdinand got 3 levels and he has C rank with Byleth. I'll need to do more checking on that. Edited February 22, 2020 by DehNutCase Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted February 22, 2020 Author Share Posted February 22, 2020 Chapter 13: Map: Spoiler Suggested Level: 27 Strictly speaking if you met the suggested level for the end of Part 1 you should meet the suggested level here, as well, since that was level 25 suggested and this is 27. That said, part 2 enemy stats are... pretty crazy. (Both in terms of how much they have an also how lopsided they are.) Pre-Map Planning: Your forces are deployed a little weird, but you'll find out why a few turns into the map, when reinforcements spawn behind your top group. At least they're player phase reinforcements so you get to respond rather than them teleporting in and killing you instantly. There's actually 2 waves of reinforcements, one from the top left corner and one from the top right corner, but if you kill the generic Paladin in the top left group then the entire top right group retreats, and triggers part 2 of the map. (Where the boss starts running away and you have to catch her.) I thought the trigger condition for the top right group to retreat was defeating the whole group, so I ended up leaving a lot of exp on the map that I could've gotten. Oh well. The easy way to do this map would be to quickly run towards top left and join your two groups together, defeat the reinforcements, and then go right to cut off the enemy retreat path. You'll need to send someone bottom right to pick up the Chest, but that's not too big of an issue. If you want maximum exp then you probably have to defeat the top right group first, meaning you should rush right ASAP, and just punch through the giagantic pile of mooks in the way to reach the other reinforcement group. I haven't tried that before so I don't quite know how the game would react if you did that, though. This is a Goddess Icon. It'll go on Byleth like everything else. Bow of Zoltan. The Zoltan weapons have high skill requirements (A rank), but tend to have stats comparable to a Silver+ weapon, and you can forge them into Zoltan+ if you're insane and willing to spend Wootz Steel for what's basically a double upgraded silver weapon. Since they also need Wootz Steel to repair that means they're pretty much just worse Silver+ weapons. It really doesn't cost you anything to just skip this thing. Anyway, onto mook stats. If you'll recall, Jeritza has 24 Defense, and he's basically the bulky person in my entire lineup. This generic mook does 32 damage to him. Even if you get 10 more Defense from battalions and shields you're still taking 22 damage a hit. 24 AS will also have doubles on most of your mooks (some guaranteed, some only if they're weighed down), so this guy probably ORKOs something like 80% of your team without crits and 100% of your team with crits. You should probably get used to this level of incoming damage. Cavaliers aren't nearly as dangerous, still having pretty bad stat spread. 42 Atk isn't awful, but it only 2HKOs your squishier units and 21 AS shouldn't double much. Brawlers are pretty interesting, in that they have better Speed than their promoted forms but worse mobility, having only 5 move rather than 6. 33 AS should double pretty much everyone in your entire team, so keep these guys away from people without something like 25 Defense. Fortress Knight bases and a good physical battalion will avoid the ORKO, but honestly it's not worth the trouble of getting defensive stats at this point since mook damage will only go up from here. Grapplers have 6 more Atk compared to Brawlers, but also 4 less AS. Not sure why, but that's how they roll. 29 AS should also double pretty much on your entire team, and 37 Atk should make mincemeat out of everyone except maybe your one or two most invested units. As you can see, they have Alliance Infantry equipped, which has Lure as their gambit. (So be careful about positioning.) Alliance Infantry is pretty much just +8 Hit, +8 Avoid, so their stat boosts aren't too relevant. One other interesting thing is that these guys are using Steel Gauntlets rather than Silver ones, but I guess they wanted you to be able to live the dream of being able to face-tank things a bit longer. Fortress Knight. Pretty much jokes. 11 AS means your mages are going to need to keep up in Speed growths to keep doubling them, but that's not too hard. The gambit is Disturbance so you don't need to care about that. Archer mook. 36 Atk, 20 AS. Not awful stats, but not really threatening compared to the piles of mooks that can straight up ORKO most of your team. Here's Judith, you kill her to win. Her stats are pretty great, but she only has a 1 range weapon so killing her shouldn't be a issue. Has a pretty okay shield, although Aegis is significantly better. Pretty good battalion as far as NPC battalion goes, at least in terms of stats. Brave Bow mook. Kill him for a Brave Bow. This is supposed to be Ignatz, I believe. I probably won't mention generics that are supposed to be people we know after this, since that requires me looking it up on the wiki and I don't always look things up on the wiki before writing these. Well, I'll mention one more thing I guess, the generic Paladin reinforcements from the top left side is supposed to be Leonie. 49 Atk with a Brave Weapon will ruin everyone's day, but 126 accuracy isn't enough to see positive hit rates against Byleth, so things will turn out about the way you'd expect. Not-Ignatz also has a pretty decent battalion. Here's the generic archer mooks. 42 Atk, 20 AS. They'll upgrade to Silver Bows eventually and become even more harmless (due to losing accuracy). Your backliners are probably in ORKO range of these guys, but we're way past the point where keeping backliners out of harms way is an issue. Reinforcement Info: These guys don't start on the map, but I might as well put their stats here anyway. Wyvern Riders are fairly dangerous, 49 Atk means most things should die to a double, and 26 AS means they should double most things. Level 34 Pegasus Knights would probably have something stupid like 48 Atk, 40 AS, but nevermind Pegasus Knights. Here's the generic Paladin who's supposed to be Leonie. 54 Atk kills everyone on my team with a double, 28 AS doubles just about everyone, and that's really all you need to to know about her. In case it's not obvious at this point, Part 2 involves either a lot of Player Phase combats or Byleth doing Byleth things. Strictly speaking it doesn't have to be Byleth doing Byleth things, but there's a bunch of little things that make it so that making Byleth your most invested unit makes the game smoother than making anyone else your most invested unit. Alliance Cavalry is a pretty sweet battalion, at least for NPCs, and the Paladin is using a Silver Lance. And here's another named mook. His stats are... basically garbage, I'll be honest. The real problem with this guy is how hard it is to get to him and his mooks to slaughter them all for exp before they turn tail and run. Ingrid got 2 Strength in 2 levels, so I ended up stapling her to Byleth to see if she would high-roll Strength and end up main team ready again. Aside from that Ferdinand is attached to Lorenz, and Leonie to Dorothea. Ingrid has the Experience Gem, the other two Knowledge Gems. Interesting that Ferdinand is level 18, since last time we checked he was level 15. From here. He has C rank support with Byleth, so levelups probably aren't based on support with Byleth after all. Kind of wish I took a bunch of screenshots of everyone before I finished part 1, so I can check how much levels they got. Oh well. Part 2 started and everyone was holding random junk to repair everything from part 1, so I'm redoing everyone's inventories. The Brave Lance is because Edelgard can't use a Brave Axe, otherwise it'd all be Axes and Swords. (In retrospect, I should've doubled checked her Prowess loadout.) I'm not a fan of the Longbow since it takes Wootz Steel to repair for some bloody reason, but I might as well get 20 uses out of it. Crit Ring is probably better than Speed Ring for Shamir, but it doesn't matter too much either way. Bows and a Devil Axe. The Steel Axe because I want to get him some Axe exp for Wyvern, everything else because he's good with lances. (Training Lance+ is for avoiding doubles, which are pretty lethal.) Not going to show the inventory of my mages since they're the same stuff as before, Linhardt with the +1 range staff, Dorothea with Evasion Ring, Annette with March ring, and Lysithea with the +2 range staff. Sylvain ends up with the Lance of Ruin again, and a Silver Shield. Last time we saw him, Sylvain was level 20, so he got 2 levels during the timeskip. (Which suggests against number of maps deployed as a factor for the amount of levelups, seeing how he and Raphael got the same amount of levels and Sylvain's been in a bunch of maps.) Sylvain had the Lance of Ruin, so Lorenz ends up with the last Brave Lance. (And a bunch of other lances as well.) Last time we saw him, Lorenz was level 21, so he got 3 levels during the timeskip. He has B support with Byleth, so looks like that's that for the Byleth support theory. You might have noticed that nobody has Chest Keys, that's because I forgot. Fortunately I have Chest Keys in convoy because I know I'm like that. Jeritza picks up 3 Prowess for his 3 weapon types (he starts with Thunder), and then Dexterity for a bit more accuracy and Mastermind for extra exp. He doesn't really need the breakers he starts with since Murderous Intent gives a bunch of accuracy on player phase, and nobody except Byleth has business taking multiple combats on enemy phase. Ferdinand is an Adjunct, but here's his skills anyway. Assuming it's 30% of Def, then Glowing Ember does 24 * .3 = 7 extra damage, or 9 MT. Basically a strictly better Tempest Lance. So he has Glowing Ember general purpose use and two effective damage combat arts. He doesn't need Helm Splitter to deal with armors, since he has Thunder, but it does more damage than Smash so he might as well have it. Fraldarius is the B rank battalion with 7 Str, 20% crit, and 6 Def at max level. It leaves him squishy as hell on the magical side but Warlocks should 2HKO everyone on my team at this point anyway, so magical bulk isn't too important. Hubert is benched, so Dorothea picks up his secretly A rank battalion. One downside of Dance exp is that it doesn't give battalion exp, so in retrospect Linhardt should've gotten this. Doop. The Map: Just about everything ORKOs everyone on my team, so turn 1 is pretty spooky. The Cavalier don't quite ORKO, but they do 2RKO most things. If I had looked at the threat squares more carefully I would've realized the spot where Annette is standing is actually in range of a Cavalier, but I didn't. (They can reach Edelgard, so they can obviously reach Annette, they're just body blocked.) Alert Stance. I dance Byleth, and find out that Annette is probably going to end up on the floor during enemy phase. (She was fine if she held Wind, I believe, but you can't trade swap spells.) Counterattack for Byleth. Edelgard moved here since I misread the Cavalier range, not realizing that both Dorothea and Lysithea are being threatened by both Cavaliers. I still dislike Lure more than the Cavaliers, though, so I kill this guy rather than one of the Cavaliers. This is a 20% chance to save me a Divine Pulse. But it doesn't happen, and I move Bernadetta back here. Linhardt doesn't avoid the Cavalier double if he's holding Nosferatu, so I have him equip Heal instead. And I Warp Annette to safety. Cavaliers have Swordbreaker so Sword Avoid doesn't do anything, and I trade swap Dorothea to make her hold a spell, holding the fact that she counters for damage would make the cavalier attack Linhardt for free as the first move. Basically, I wanted this combat to happen first. Then this combat. Dorothea takes more damage so usually her combat would happen first, but if she had enough damage to counter-kill this might happen 2nd. (She doesn't.) If I had a Silver Shield or something I also could've trade swapped that into her inventory. Top side was like this. Enemy Phase isn't going to end well, unfortunately. Dorothea doesn't even 2RKO, so the AI treats her the team as Linhardt in terms of target selection, and the fact that she takes more damage means she's targeted. Oops. (31% chance to dodge is pretty awful in a two-roll system, so this is very much the expected outcome. A Speed Ring might've helped her more than her Evasion Ring, since it might push her into being able to double the Cavaliers.) So I reset to turn 1. To be honest this was a good chance to completely reset and pick up some Chest Keys, but I didn't bother. Divine Pulse: 18 So I redo Annette's buffs in a less stupid location. Ditto for Special dance. Edelgard is safe from being 2RKOd so it doesn't matter for her where she stands. So I have her stand a bit forward after buffing Byleth, to make it easier to protect the rest of the team.. And Byleth murders the Lure guy again. Before stopping here. (She's here to force the archers into attacking at 3 range.) I haven't checked, but Lysithea should be in 2RKO range and the range of both Cavaliers. But she's safe because she ORKOs on the counter, so the Cavaliers would prefer to target someone else over dying. A easier way to start this map would be to rush one of the Cavaliers and use gambits to stop the other mooks from turning your mooks into chunky salsa, but I wanted to use those unit-turns buffing Byleth instead so she can go cover the map. Bottom side ends like this since it's good enough for the Enemy Phase. Top side ends like this. Doop. Enemy Phase combat. Ditto. This misses. More enemy phase. C+ Flying for Ingrid. This guy swapped to unarmed rather than using his Silver Gauntlets. Which was interesting. This isn't the kind of level Ingrid needs to get back into the team. : / This is a different Brawler this time. A Flying for Byleth. Cavalier goes for Bernadetta because Bernadetta is squishier than Lysithea + doesn't ORKO back. But here we can see that being ORKOd is a bigger concern than maximizing damage dealt, since this guy goes for Edelgard rather than Lysithea, even though Edelgard is tankier than Lysithea. I don't know why the AI didn't Canto, though, since both Cavaliers should've had a point of movement left. I guess because moving doesn't change how many units they can be attacked by? The AI really likes attacking Byleth while unarmed. Small note that this guy could 2HKO Byleth if he had positive hit rates. Part 2 enemy stats are pretty crazy (in terms of how good they are at killing things) and also pretty crazy (in terms of how inaccurate everyone is). I think Hilda (who we'll see on the next map), has like 80 Atk or something. Which should be able to OHKO Byleth if she had actual hit rates. Anyway, that was the last Enemy Phase combat, and I have Edelgard fly over to grab a Chest Key. It slows things down a bit since I have to use some of Edelgards turns just flying over to the Chest, but not too much. Byleth flies over here, at maximum range from the Brave Bow sniper. Snipers tend to have good accuracy, but the -20 per tile is way too harsh, so they end being up one of the less accurate units. At least they aren't Bow Knights, which end up complete jokes in enemy hands. Lorenz... misses both hits, dammit man. Jeritza tries to fish for a crit, which happens. Jeritza is in range of both the Cavalier and the Brawler, but as long as he doesn't crit kill he'll only be taking one enemy phase combat. (Since the Cavalier has to move maximum distance to reach him, meaning no Canto to open up a space.) It's pretty handy that he comes in being able to front-line. Shamir gets some free damage in with the Ballista. And top side ends like this. Lysithea smacking with Swarm to make whoever attacks next have an easier time. (With the Speed buff reducing Avoid.) Not that Accuracy is a huge concern since we have a lot of A ranked supports now. Annette kills a Cavalier. Bernadetta finishes the Warrior. Bernadetta Cantos down here and I dance her. Doop. Canto. Not much for Linhadt to do unless I felt like using Warp to farm exp, so I have him Wait. Doop. Enemy Phase combat. (Those sure were some damage numbers, pity about the negative hit chance.) According to the numbers, Byleth is exactly as strong as before, but she is faster, so it's a good level. And we loot a pristine Brave Bow off that Sniper's corpse. Miss. (Not sure why this guy is using a gambit. He's full hp so he shouldn't care about Edelgard's counter.) Hit. Again, AI behavior I didn't expect. The Brawler doubles Jeritza for 20 damage total, so he should be the one attacking. Enemy Phase Byleth things. And the reinforcements arrive at the start of Player Phase. Byleth convoys the Crescent Sickle and picks up a Chest Key. And picks up the Bow of Zoltan. It's only 20 durability, so it's not that great, but having Silver+ stats means it's decent for OHKOing fliers, at least. Not sure why I used the Spear of Assal rather than just Knightkneeling this guy, but eh. This guy was already damaged, so a Frozen Lance easily finishes him off. Getting Ferdinand B+ Lances. (He's adjuncting as a Brigand, but he still has a Lance equipped.) And I Canto Lorenz somewhere I regret. (I didn't pay attention to the Paladin's numbers, so I expected Lorenz to be able to survive a single round, at least, but he's ORKOd from full hp.) So I have Lysithea try to distract the Paladin, moving her into the Paladin's range before attacking this guy. She's ORKOd by the Paladin, but Dark Spikes means she can OHKO before she gets doubled to death. Lysithea doesn't quite OHKO from full hp, though, so Shamir had to shoot the Paladin with a Ballista, first. And she Cantos over here. Numbers of Sadness. Lorenz only has 47 max hp, so he's dead as a doornail. So I have Annette Stride Edelgard to get into range to Reposition Lorenz. Alley-oop. And then she moves back into the spot Lorenz left. Holding her regular weapons would've gotten her doubled to death by the Paladin (similar to Lorenz, she's dead from full hp), so I had Sylvain give her his Training Lance+, taking the Chest Key in exchange. Canto. Lysithea has 36 max hp, by the way, so she's fine. Assuming she doesn't explode from a crit. Doop. Dance. And Linhardt things. Byleth doesn't really need Bernadetta's help, so she flies back to the group. If I knew the cavaliers reinforcements were going to run away after I killed the Paladin I would've played things differently, since I need another turn to kill them, but eh. Enemy Phase combat. The 12% crit and 19% miss chance are a little alarming, but things turned out fine. Sort of, since this guy turned tail and ran immediately after the Paladin died, so we missed out on a fair amount of exp. When you can't even double Linhardt there might be a problem. Doop. And more doop. And Ingrid is going back to the bench permanently, now. Start of turn 4, so you can see where all the enemy mook moved. Shamir kills a Wyvern, and Cantos back to safety. Trying a gambit, which lands. The Sniper is in range to hit Lorenz, but Sniper damage isn't too much of an issue. Doop. And doop. She had multiple ORKO options, but they all had shaky accuracy, fortunately enough hits landed for the Sniper to die. Missing the ORKO on the sniper wouldn't have been too big of a concern, though, since we had a lot of uni-turns free. Linhardt tries a gambit, which misses. But it was mostly to setup for this one anyway. If I wanted 100% odds I could've gotten it, by moving someone into range for support bonus, but 85% was good enough that I didn't bother. Exp farming. The first shot crits, so the guy explodes. And Bernadetta finally gets another point of Strength. 2 points in 6 levels is 33%, so she basically exactly hit her average Strength growth (35%), but unlike Bow Knight Bernadetta she isn't going to get Bowfaire for free, so I'm hoping she gets a bit luckier from now on. Doop. And Sylvain picks up the Goddess Icon. Goddess Icons are worth more than Speedwings at this point, since magic damage is the only thing Byleth is concerned about, so this is pretty great. It's mostly a quality of life thing, though, since infantry mages can't catch up to Byleth unless she wants them to, and mage cavalry are pretty rare even in the lategame. Canto. Make a note of this picture, namely, the fact that all 3 of the Brawlers/Grapplers can hit Byleth. She's out of range from one of the Snipers, but that's because I wanted to be at maximum range from the other one. Basically just mop up now since we failed to keep the Cavalier reinforcements on the map. It's a good thing I played this map before, or else the pretty major amounts of reinforcements and the sudden Defeat Condition change would be pretty damn annoying. Enemy Phase combat. The first enemy phase combat. You might notice that a Grappler is already missing, that's because he ran for the exit for some reason. I have no idea how the AI on this map works. The 8% crit rate is concerning, but Lorenz dodges both crits. More Enemy Phase Byleth. And the Sniper decides he's tired of living. Byleth does Byleth things. We can also see where the Grappler ran off to in this screenshot. And I have Byleth bodyblock him from being able to escape immediately. Shamir kills another Wyvern. Note that Shamir Canto'd up a square to provide support. Not that it matters since it's only the unranked support's 3% accuracy or so. But Sylvain lands his attack and so does Lorenz, so another Sniper bites the dust. Canto. Axe exp farming. Edelgard flies down here and Dorothea dances her. Sword exp farming. (Sword exp is slightly higher priority than Axe exp since Edelgard needs C Swords to get into Falcon Knight.) Canto. This is Linhardt warping Lysithea for exp. Exp farming. Bernadetta moves over to bait, and I swap her to Iron Bow+ for maximum AS. The mook doesn't end up attacking her, though. Pretty much done. So this time the mook decided to attack Byleth even though he could just run around her if he wanted to, and he just ran away the last time he was in range to attack Byleth. Again, no idea how the AI on this map works. The 8% hit is because Byleth doesn't have Alert Stance active. Last minute exp farming. Ditto. I have no idea where Linhardt is getting all this Speed from. It lets him double armors with the heavier tomes, but he'll still be doubled by pretty much everything in part 2. Axe exp farming. She crits, so the mook explodes. Dance. More exp farming. And Byleth does Byleth things. Ingrid didn't get a single point of Strength in the 3 levels she got on this map... Hexlock Shield. It's... not very useful. Warlocks have pretty crazy Atk, so your main hope is to avoid the double, which a 4 WT shield doesn't help you do. Of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted February 22, 2020 Author Share Posted February 22, 2020 Chapter 13 (well, sort of): More Notes on Timeskip Levelups: Spoiler Ignore the class images, we're in the reclass menu because it gives us an easy way to look at everyone's levels. Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to keep a save from before I finished part 1, so I need to dig through old screenshots to figure out everyone's past levels. We're ignoring Byleth since it seems like she's not supposed to level up between parts anyway. We've seen Edelgard already (she got 2 levels), so let's find Hubert. This should've been the last time we've seen him, so he got 2 levels between parts. We've seen Ferdinand already, and he got 3 levels. Linhardt, interestingly enough, got a level despite being level 25 the last time we saw him. I kind of assumed he just got 2 levels from level 24, but no, unlike Bernadetta he got a level. The last time we saw him. Linhardt and Bernadetta are probably the two people to look at to see what causes the levelups between parts. Caspar and Bernadetta we saw already, so let's look at Dorothea. I had assumed she got 3 levels from 24, but actually she got 2 levels from 25. Last time we saw her. This means that level 25 isn't a cutoff, it's just that the mechanics of the timeskip gave Bernadetta 0 levels, Linhardt 1 level, and Dorothea 2 levels. I'll take a look at the three of them and also Caspar (who got 3 levels), and try to figure out what's the difference between them. I swear if the reason is that 'people get random amounts of levels between 0-3' I'll be mad. I'll be even madder if the reason is 'every character gets a specified amount of levelups depending on who they are.' ...But that seems to be the most likely possibility, according to: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/204445-fire-emblem-three-houses/78071330 tl;dr is from that post is: 8 +3 level characters (Lysithea, Leonie, Ferdinand, Caspar, Petra, Felix, Annette, and Cyril) 7 +2 level up characters (Claude, Lorenz, Raphael, Ignatz, Dorothea, Sylvain, Ingrid) 10 +1 level up charactes (Marianne, Hilda, Linhardt, Mercedes Seteth, Hanneman, Maneula, Alois, Catherine, and Shamir) 2 +0 level up characters (Bernadetta and Flayn) He's missing Ashe, but according to my screenshots he's a 2 levelup character: Last time we saw Ashe. (Dude was doing like 3 damage to Pegasus Knights on that map, no way he got a levelup.) Screenshot of his level from my start of Part 2 save. Edelgad we know gets 2 levels, but I'll need to do a Blue Lions run to figure out Dimitri and Dedue's levels. (I'm guessing 2 for Dimitri and 2 or 3 for Dedue, though.) That said, his info about levelup stats seem to be a bit off. He seemed to think characters get better than expected levelups from the timeskip levels, but my Lysithea is a pretty good argument that it's just pure RNG. (He probably had good RNG on levelup stats across the board.) I'll need more detailed data on timeskip levelups to be certain about how many levels everyone gets, but his amount of levels data seem to be pretty accurate. If I ever do more playthroughs of Three Houses I'll keep more detailed levelup data between parts so I can double check everything's correct, but that requires me having more free time than I do at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted February 28, 2020 Author Share Posted February 28, 2020 Chapter 14: Academy: Spoiler We had a tea party, it was Nice. (No Charm.) Support from combat. Turns out, Dorothea already has better stats in everything than Warlock bases, so I ended up reloading this even though she passed. Exploration: There's 2 rare monster sightings this map, but we can't do Paralogues yet so it's not the best time for them. Quest Stuff: Fishing quest. Find some stuff on the ground quest. Comba quest (worthless). Find some stuff on the ground. According to the wiki there should be a quest with Jeritza this month, but I didn't see it. Strange Fish Shadow is pretty common, and it's what gives you the quest fish. Not sure why the fish has a sell price since you lose it immediately to the quest, but *shrug*. Doop. Some running around to find quest items later. Morfis Magic Corps is a C rank battalion with -2 Str, 5 Mag, 2 Def, 5 Res, and 5 Charm at max level. So a pretty average magic battalion that you get pretty late. If you're heavy on casters or just like the AoE of Resonant gambits it's okay, but usually you have more than enough good magic battalions at this point in the game. We have some Renown again, so I buy another Divine Pulse. Don't really need more, but *shrug*. And then we buy Brawling Skills+1 and Exp +5% from Indech. Costing 800 points total. Non-Quest Stuff: This, uh, wasn't my actual yield, but I didn't take a screenshot of my reloaded yield for some reason. (I reloaded for Nordsalat seeds, as usual.) The usual. Doop. Doing a tournament for the Silver Lance+. One notable thing about the tournament, It's level 30 recommended, but the final fight is: This loser. Last month had a recommended level of 28, but the final fight was: It's a Swordmaster, 3 levels higher, and fast enough to double Jeritza. (He died due to a crit, without crits he barely wins.) Cooking with Edelgard. And I buy out all the top tier bait and the 100g gifts. Tea Party since Jeritza's Charm is pretty damn low. It feels like the amount of Charm a particular unit can get from Tea Parties in a month has a set limit, but I haven't tested enough to get a good idea of whether that limit is random or not. It was Perfect and both Byleth and Jeritza got a point of Charm. Afterward I had another tea party (or several), but he stopped getting Charm so I reloaded them all. Training. Tea party with Lysithea, and both Byleth and Lysithea got a point of Charm. (It was Great.) If I had to guess then 2 Charm in a month is the maximum limit from parties, since Byleth stopped getting Charm from parties for the rest of the month. More training. A lances, which unlocks every single Lance for Byleth. A+ will be nice for Prowess Lv. 5, but S or S+ won't make too much of a difference. And we finished off the day with 4 more tournaments. Lecture: Getting Edelgard C Swords for Falcon Knight. Grounder gives +20 Hit, which is nice since Edelgard has Dex issues, but half the fliers will have Swordbreaker so it doesn't really help Edelgard's matchup against fliers. (Which is awful, due to her accuracy issues.) Getting Hubert B+ Reason to pick up Warlock/Dark Bishop stats. Flying to get Caspar on a Wyvern. D Flying. Lances for Annette, since you need C Lances for mage cavalry. (And worst comes to worst I can have her adjunct a bit as cavalier to pick up some more Riding exp.) Flying for Wyvern. D Flying. Swords for Falcon Knight. E+ Swords. Flying for Wyvern. The bonus skill is Darting Blow, so it's useful to tutor Jeritza a bit even if you aren't planning to Wyvern him. E+ Flying. Leonie and Shamir goes on Sky Watch duties to get to B+ Flying a little faster. Caspar goes into Axes and Flying, dropping Authority for the time being. Lecture Questions don't really matter at this point, since your Roster is probably too big for it to hit relevant people that often and you really should be maxed out on Professor Levels. Support level from tutoring. This one was a waste in terms of Motivation, but eh. Another support level from tutoring, I believe. Byleth has A ranks with most of the team now, so she can pick up a bunch of hit and avoid from support bonuses when she needs it. Leonie and Shamir will see Perfects pretty often once their support levels get higher, but it won't be guaranteed since neither of them has a bonus to Sky Watch. Self Study nabs Bernadetta B+ Lances. And Annette B+ Reason. Mercedes got B rank Faith this week, and also Restore. Doop. Those sure were some exp that nobody cared about. Annette passed, and I put her into Warlock. Taking a gander at the rare monster. I didn't know this until later, but turns out you can just exit the map, go into the map selection screen, and select the map again to reroll the monster and its drop. Hauteclere is a pretty good axe, but I only care about Gradivus so I passed for the week. Exploration: Doop. The amount of stat boosters you can get from the Greenhouse is actually kind of stupid. So's the stat caps in this game, to be honest. Stacking stat boosters would be less of an issue if Byleth had reasonable stat caps, but she caps Speed at 66. (Assuming stats works the way I think they work it means she can hit 71 Speed in Falcon Knight before buffs.) Why are her caps so high that you can't reach them even if you had her chug stat boosters for the entire game? The usual. Support with Ferdinand. Motivation refills. Doop. We had 2 refills from Support, 4 from sharing meals, so there was 1 person left with 0 Motivation, and I just spammed them with gifts. A support from meal sharing between Caspar and Shamir. Invited Jeritza to a tea Party. It was perfect, and gave him a point of Charm. Because the last Perfect also gave him a point of Charm this suggests that that the amount of Charm you can get in a month is capped by a number, rather than the different results. (The other option was setting whether or not you get Charm from Nice/Great/Perfect at start of month, and then making it so you don't get Charm from, say, Perfect, more than once in a month.) Working on Sword rank now since Byleth has a Strength for it, making it more efficient to train for. Tea party with Lysithea, Perfect, and Lysithea gets a point of Charm. Lances from Shamir. Choir for some very tiny bits of Faith exp for Dorothea and Lysithea. At this rate I'm not sure if Lysithea will pick up Warp before the game ends, lul. Swords from Manuela. And we cap off the day with a pair of tournaments. Lecture: More Reason for Hubert. Flying for Caspar. D+ Swords for Bernadetta. Strictly speaking tutoring Lances/Flying and having Bernadetta self-study swords is more efficient, but it doesn't matter too much. E+ Swords. Tutoring Edelgard a little in Flying. Wyvern Rider already has endgame stats, so I'm not too worried about Alois' Flying Weakness. Even if he never ends up Wyvern Lord that won't be what makes or breaks his inclusion on the team. Swords for Shamir. And more flying for Jeritza. D Flying. Only 'good' this week, but oh well. B+ Reason for Hubert. D+ Swords for Leonie. Ignatz got B Swords and Axe-breaker, Hanneman B+ Reason and another level in Prowess. Hubert passed, but he didn't get any stats so I just reloaded. (He still needs to stay in mage for a bit for Fiendish Blow, and it'll be cheaper to get him into Dark Bishop than Warlock, since pretty much nobody except Hubert actually wants to be in Dark Bishop.) This fails. So Caspar tests Fighter to advance his RNG numbers. Exploration: Doop. No carrots this week, but oh well. It's blessing of the land, so I would've planted 1x even if I had more than 5 seeds. (To give more chances to roll Nordsalat seeds.) The usual. Motivation refills. Edelgard went to 100 Motivation from this, so this probably means that while you need both people to like it to get max Professor Points from sharing meals, it's fine if only one person likes the meal to get max Motivation refill for both. Support from sharing meals. Shamir is still 0 Motivation, but I got her up to 100 by giving her a bunch of gifts. Lances from Shamir. I then proceeded to spam an unfortunate number of Tea Parties, but Jeritza didn't get any more Charm no matter what the result was. So 2 Charm/month is probably the limit. Swords from Jeritza. Swords from Manuela. The problem with Windsweep is that by the time you get it Byleth is probably at the level where she can fight every single enemy on the map in a single Enemy Phase and win, at least if you've been investing into her. Aside from the fact that it's basically redundant it's a really good Combat Art, though, since it prevents counters and add 20% hit, 10% crit, and 3 MT. Choir with Dorothea and Lysithea. And we cap off the day with 3 more tournaments. Lecture: More Flying. B+, so she's set on that part of Falcon Knight. So Byleth tutors her in Lances to finish off the session. Lances and Axes now. Going to need to work on Edelgard's Axe rank for a while to pick up higher Prowess for accuracy and also Brave Axes at B rank. More Flying for Caspar. Swords again. D Swords. Lysithea only needed a tiny nudge to get A Authority, so why not. A Authority, meaning I can give Gloucester to someone else and have her use an A rank mage battalion, now. Lances for mage cavalary. E+ Lances. Her goals are Lances and Riding now, for mage cavalary. More flying for Alois. D+ Swords for Shamir. She'll probably be in Pegasus Knight for a bit even after level 30, since she's missing quite a few levels of Lances before reaching A. D Swords. Flying for Jeritza. Darting Blow, so Jeritza's an honorary Pegasus Knight now. A rank with Shamir, and free motivation refill. B rank with Jeritza & refill. Perfect Sky Watch. B Flying for Leonie, so she gets Alert Stance. Linhardt got D Lances, Sylvain B+ Authority, and Raphael D Authority (and Rally Strength). B support between Leonie and Shamir from Sky Watch. This fails. So I have Caspar test for Myrmidon, which also fails. But that's actually better than passing, since it means I can use 500g Seals to advance his RNG later. We're out of Beginner Seals so I buy a pair. This passes, and I get Alois into Wyvern Rider. Jeritza fails, though. So I have him take Fighter. It's rare monster day, so I take a peek. We saw Mercurius twice with this, counting the one we saw from Part 1, which was why I ended up looking online about how monster loot works. Turns out you can reload them. (So I'll probably just do some reloads once Paralogues open up to grab Gradivus.) Exploration: Doop. Only two Nordsalat Seeds, but oh well. Blessing of the Land meant we had great odds on Speed Carrots, so getting one was more or less expected. We have 6 seeds now, so I do a 5x plant. The usual. Tea party with Bernadetta. It was Perfect, and go her a point of Charm. Swords from Jeritza. Tea part with Lorenz. First try was Great, and no Charm, second was Perfect, and got him a point of Charm. I was mostly just double checking whether or not the Charm limit in a month was unit based or not. Great got Ferdinand a point of Charm. (Which means Charm per month is probably capped at 2 Charm per unit, and no cap in the team beyond the only 2 Charm per person thing.) Lances from Shamir. Swords from Manuela. Another test of the 1 person likes the meal, 1 person doesn't thing. Bernadetta goes to 100 Motivation. More refills. Huberts already full Motivation, but Lysithea wasn't, and I was too lazy to give more gifts/sort through all the lost items in my inventory. And we finish the day with some Choir practice. Pre-map Promotions: Doop. Caspar gets into Wyvern, and picks up a little Resistance. Jeritza fails his test, but oh well. Death Knight is a pretty good class, anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted February 28, 2020 Author Share Posted February 28, 2020 Chapter 15: Map: Spoiler Suggested Level: 29, it says. It's sort of right, but also sort of misleading. In terms of sheer stats the enemies on the map are probably some of the strongest in the entire route, but because of the way the map is set up you can do it while being hilariously under-leveled. Pre-map Planning: It's the same map as Shamir's Paralogue, except missing the boats. If you have a good memory for maps this is probably a bit suspicious. The boats will appear once enemy phase starts. Warriors are warriors, they hit like trucks so if you're getting doubled you're getting killed, but 26 AS isn't too hard to avoid doubles from. Gremory with a Master Seal you can steal. This is supposed to be Lysithea, I believe, who's recruitable in this map if you have Byleth smack her into the ground before sparing her life. She'll come in with pretty awful bases in terms of skill levels, though, so I don't recommend it. (As in, you should probably just recruit her normally and use her normally.) As a generic damage dealing mage she'll be okay, coming in at level 29 with 32 Mag and 21 Speed in Mage, and B Authority for battalions, but she'll come in as Mage and without Fiendish Blow, meaning the casters you had until this point should be comparable or better even if they're lower leveled. Her battalion is pretty decent, and it has Resonant Lightning as the gambit. Unsealable Magic, because whoever designs maps hates the idea of utility spells. (Silence is basically just an exp spell, you never get to use it on anything that matters.) One tiny thing to watch out for is that she can attack at 27 AS if she swaps to Bolganone, so don't take the 20 AS she has at face value. She also OHKOs the majority of your units, given her 71 Atk, but the way the map is setup means that it's trivial to fight the dangerous mooks on Player Phase rather than Enemy Phase, and her low Def means that it's pretty easy to 2HKO her with a brave weapon. Snipers exist, they're not too much of a threat, having low Atk and low Speed, at least relatively speaking. I... misremembered how much Hit Hilda has. It's actually 10% better than it looks, since Apocalyptic Flame (Freikugel's unique Combat Art) gives 20 Hit. But it's only 10% better than it looks because you can just yoink the Accuracy Ring (and the Elixir) from Hilda before she fights you. 81 Atk is enough to OHKO Byleth with like 5 points or overkill or something, and Apocalyptic Flame also adds 15 MT. 30 AS and Darting Blow means she doubles most your mooks when attacking, but that bit doesn't matter seeing how she OHKOs all your mooks when attacking. Part of the reason her stats are so crazy is because her Battalion is one of the best in the game & at max level. Goneril Valkyries is a B rank battalion, incidentally. Anyway, it's easy to fight her on player phase and she doesn't have any way to deal with ranged attacks, so she's not too much of a problem despite her obscene stats. (I'm pretty sure she has the best overall combat out of every unit in the entire route---she's not crazy fast like some of the other ones, but she OHKOs everything + is really accurate to boot.) Byleth isn't quite at the point where she can handle Hilda on enemy phase with full reliability, but she's only like 200 flying exp away, so someone who min-maxed harder than I did could just Enemy Phase Hilda without problems. There's a bunch of units guarding gates, but not actually standing on heal tiles or anything. If you kill them reinforcements stop spawning from the gate they're guarding. One nice thing is that the unit guarding the gate is what unit type that spawns, which makes it easy to know who needs to go where. This gate, for example, spawns Warriors. Their battalions aren't bad, but not too interesting either. It had Absorb as the gambit. Paladins... are basically upgraded Cavaliers, and, just like Cavaliers, they have jokes for stat spreads. No idea why the game waited until Part 2 before putting generic Paladins into maps. Lampos Shield is more interesting as a 0 WT shield than as something that nullifies cavalry effectiveness, since enemy mooks are perfectly capable of ORKOing your mooks with generic weapons. It drops when you kill the Paladin, so no need to steal it. Dude has Alliance Knights as his battalion, which has Blaze as the gambit, as you might expect. Sniper guy probably has it the worst on gate guarding duty, since he can't counter at 1 range. His battalion means he's a bit more accurate than regular Snipers, but 140 accuracy isn't good enough to write home about. (Especially since it's really more like 120 when it matters.) Gambit's Fusillade. Killing all of the reinforcement gate guarding people will get you a Talisman, so make sure to do that if you aren't worried about turn-count. There's a pair of War Masters on the map, and they hit pretty hard while also being pretty fast. Their accuracy is pretty garbage, though. And here's Claude, with a Hexlock Shield and Elixir you can steal. Immortal Corps is pretty great, between the 15 Avoid (highest for Flying Battalions, IRRC), and Ashes and Dust, which is basically Fusillade except with a radius of 2 rather than 1. It doesn't give any accuracy, though, so Claude's sitting at 108 Hit when he attacks from 3 range. He doesn't really matter, though, between gambits and 4 range attacks it's easy to chip him down even if you don't have anyone who can handle Close Counter. All of the mooks so far are on the map during the preview, the next ones are the reinforcements once the boats arrive. Wyvern Riders. 63 Atk means they hit hard enough to OHKO your squishier units (they hit hard enough to overkill Fortress Knight bases by 11), and 34 AS means they double the vast majority of your team. Something like 90% of your team is ORKOd by Wyvern Riders, probably. Their accuracy isn't too great, though. Some of them have battalions, but gambits don't matter too much when they can ORKO you with a normal attack. (Generic Wyverns without battalions do lose 5 Atk from losing the battalion, but 58 Atk is still more than enough to threaten ORKOs.) Bow Knights are jokes. The only reason Paladins aren't the worst enemy units is because Bow Knights exist. This guy has 80 Hit when attacking at 4 range, 80 Hit. And even when they do hit 46 Atk and 22 AS isn't exactly threatening. And even the Bow Knight that has a battalion doesn't have an accuracy battalion, so it's just as useless as the other ones. Nader has a Brave Axe and 71 Atk, but also 99 Hit. He probably kills close to 100% of your team if he can actually land his hits thanks to his great Atk and 36 AS, but he won't land his hits. He drops Aurora Shield when he dies, but you can also yoink it from him and stuff him full of arrows if you want to be fancy. Decent battalion, but the gambit doesn't matter too much since he can just KO you with a regular attack. Reinforcements will slowly trickle in from the boats, 1 Wyvern a turn or something like that, and also 2 units per gate every 2 turns, starting on turn 4. Most of the units on boats start aggro'd so they'll rush towards your team immediately, and so do the reinforcements, but aside from that the enemy mooks mostly wait for you to come and kill them, so as long as you don't take something crazy like 3 unit-turns to kill a single unit the map is just slowly chugging your way through on player phase. Ultra invested units that can kill multiple people on Enemy Phase would be nice to have, but not really something you need. Alois and Caspar can fly now, so they can be Adjunct to whoever for exp purposes. Caspar has the Experience Gem and is stapled to Byleth, Hubert and Alois each have a Knowledge Gem, Alois is stapled to Leonie (to start working on their support levels for their bond bonus), and Hubert is stapled to Dorothea. Byleth shelves the Bow of Zoltan she found in a Chest last map and picks up a Silver Sword in exchange. Sylvain's on the team since I wanted another copy of Stride (I wasn't sure how tight on time I was going to be---if I knew the map was just enemy mooks sitting there and waiting for me to kill them I wouldn't have prioritized Stride). He picks up Lorenz's Aegis Shield and Brave Lance since Lorenz is benched. Leonie ends up with a Killer Bow and a bunch of Lances, including Luin. (Leonie doesn't have a Crest, but 10 damage post-combat doesn't matter when everyone's getting 1 or 2RKOd anyway. At worst post-combat damage changes things from a 3RKO to a 2RKO.) Crit ring is more or less a 'why not' kind of thing. Edelgard picks up a Short Axe, I believe. I swap in Darting Blow in exchange for HP +5. She doesn't need more AS to double, but it's an extra 6 avoid when attacking. HP doesn't matter against Hilda because she's perfectly capable of OHKOing Byleth regardless, and it doesn't matter against anyone else since Byleth sees close to 0%s on everyone except Hilda. If I were seriously going to try to tank Hilda on enemy phase then I would swap in Axebreaker here---breakers are bad in general since their numbers are so bad, but if there's only 1 or 2 units on the map that can give you problems then there's no shame in picking up a skill that helps against those problem units. Byleth needs Alert Stance+ and Axebreaker to be perfectly consistent against Hilda on enemy phase, though. (Although Axebreaker by itself would've pushed Hilda's accuracy to 20%, which is around what I consider, 'eh, good enough,' when I'm wondering whether or not to toss Byleth into a bunch of units.) I swap around Jeritza's skills, dropping Sword Prowess and Reason for Darting Blow and Axe Prowess, I believe. He's still getting doubled by the more dangerous units, but he can consistently double stuff like Warriors. In terms of combat he's stronger than Edelgard, now, thanks to her accuracy issues, but Edelgard will be more mobile than him for pretty much the rest of the game. (Since she'll be getting Falcon Knight, for 8 move flying mobility, whereas Jeritza will have either 7 move flying as Wyvern Rider or 8 move grounded as a Paladin.) I stopped pretending that Sword Avoid matters, and gave Dorothea Faith and White Magic Avoid instead for emergency avoid tanking purposes. Gave Byleth Galatea for 5 more Avoid, just to be safe. Only Edelgard can equip Cichol at the moment, aside from Byleth, so it ends up unused for this map. I trade Empire Magic users with Vestra Sorcery Engineers since Dancers don't get much battalion exp, meaning it's better that Linhardt has the one that's not max level'd. (As a minor note, I like Resonant Flames the most out of the magic gambits, since it has the most accuracy---MT doesn't really matter on gambits.) We're at the point that mages won't be surviving physical hits no matter what in most cases, so Lysithea swaps to Macuil Evil Repelling Co. Which has 7 Mag and 30 Hit at max level, meaning Lysithea doesn't really need to have Fire access anyone. I didn't swap her out of mage, though, since Macuil isn't max level yet. I also like Resonant Lightning the least of the mage gambits, since it has the worst accuracy, but I'm obviously fine with wasting gambit slots since I'm fine with putting Gloucester on Lysithea. Bernadetta picks up Empire Pegasus Co. to replace Galatea. Shamir picks up Empire Elite Wyvern Co. And Leonie picks up Empire Wyvern Co. Replenishing Battalions. And I have Byleth chug the stat boosters we have lying around. A total of +4 Luck, +4 Speed. She picks up the Killer Lance and Silver Sword again before I start the map. The Map: Interesting that it says to 'stall' the reinforcements rather than to 'stop.' But yeah, the reinforcements completely stop once you kill the gate guards. Highlighted in red is Hilda's Horrible Death Radius™. If you want to be completely safe you can just lure a single warrior in the Gremory's group, which will aggro the other 2 & the Gremory, but it's pretty easy to just Stride up and kill the group, so you don't really need to. Annette things. Stride. Sylvain Cantos forward since I know the first set of enemy mooks won't be a problem by the end of the player phase. Counterattack for Byleth. And Edelgard Cantos up here to provide support bonus. Doop. Doop. And doop. Between Lysithea's shaky Charm and Resonant lightning's shaky accuracy this gambit isn't too accurate, but it lands. Yoink. I missed the convoy screenshot, but Byleth ended up putting away her Brave Sword and her Killer Lance. She Cantos here. Linhardt Warps Dorothea forward. I have Dorothea hold Heal just in case, and Dance Byleth. I knew the boats are going to spawn on the right side, so Byleth flies over here to take care of it. (This isn't as far as she could fly, but I wanted her in range to support the main group if necessary, next turn.) Poke. And Leonie flies forward to end the turn. End of turn 1. And the game tosses 3 boats into the map at the start of enemy phase. They start far enough away that none of the enemy units in boats should reach any of your units unless you already knew they were coming, though. Enemy Phase combat. In retrospect Edelgard shouldn't have been holding a lance. (She missed both hits on the counter.) More enemy Phase. Great level, but really only the Strength and Speed are important. Interesting that this guy attacked at 3 range, he should have had something like 4% odds at 2 range, so I'm not sure what's going on with the AI. A Wyvern flies into Byleth's sword, with expected results. And Caspar starts the map with a mediocre level. Strength is more important than Speed since it's hard to get enough Speed to matter, but at least it's not something like HP and Charm. Convoying for a 2 range weapon since I want Byleth to be close to the main team. Not sure what's up with me and the bad screenshots, but I convoy the Silver Sword+ and also pick up a Steel Bow+. Both hits ended up landing so the guy explodes. Byleth flies back to the group and Lysithea picks up a kill. It has Mag, it has Speed, it even has Dex for a bit more accuracy. (That 52 damage counter is a yikes). And Edelgard ends up with a level of mostly useless stats. Edelgard Cantos below Byleth, and Sylvain tries to get a poke in. (And misses.) I'm doing these not quite lethal combats since I want Bernadetta to kill the guy with the Devil Axe. Doop. Byleth gets danced. And I have her swap to a Silver Sword before dismounting in bushes, giving her something like 150 avoid against 80 accuracy. (Bow Knights are so worthless.) Linhardt things, as he slowly walks up to catch up to the team. Annette and Leonie move to join the group, and turn 2 ends like this. Enemy Phase combat. Ditto. Last one. (This guy lived with 1 hp, by the way.) And at the start of player phase Hubert tells us the Wyvern Riders stop coming if we kill Nader. I mount up on Byleth, fly her closer to the Bow Knight that lived, and pick up some ranged weapons from convoy. Sublime Creator Sword ended up being the one with the best accuracy, so I had Byleth kill the Bow Knight with it. Getting Caspar a great level. She Cantos up here. Anette things, although this ended up not mattering. Fishing for a crit. (Which happens.) Jeritza comes down since he has enough Strength to counter-kill Bow Knights. (Nobody has problems tanking bow knights since they're awful, so it's the counter-kill that matters more.) Jeritza gets danced. And repo'd 2 squares down since he doesn't quite have enough mobility to reach the bush that's in range of both Bow Knights that are coming. Doop. I gather everyone up, and turn 3 ends like this. Wyvern spawns over here, but I'll stop mentioning it from now on. They come every single turn, IRRC. Bow Knights, what a joke. (Sub 20% accuracy is basically nothing.) This one had to attack at 4 range, so it has 0%. I would've liked Speed as well, but Strength is good enough by itself to carry a level. Start of player phase, Bernadetta kills a reinforcing Wyvern Rider. In retrospect I'm being a bit wasteful with my Brave Bow uses, since I could've just had Shamir + Bernadetta tag team the Wyverns as they approach, but eh. Canto. Stride since there's nothing to do here at the bottom of the map. I move Sylvain and Byleth up and Annette does Annette things. Byleth gets danced. And Dorothea gets a more or less Speed only level. I warp Byleth closer to Hilda so she can Steal and run. Yoink. (I messed with Byleth's inventory a bit when I convoyed stuff to make space for stealing.) Canto. I.... think these numbers take into account Apocalyptic Flame? Byleth has a bit less than 30 defense after taking into account her battalion, so 69 damage is too much for 81 Atk, but about right for 96 Atk. 96 - 30 = 66. This means Byleth with Axebreaker can be reasonably expected to survive Hilda's attack on enemy phase, and Byleth with Axebreaker & Alert Stance+ would be seeing 0%. But I didn't like 35% odds, so I had Edelgard fly up and dump two of her items into the convoy. In order to take the Elixir and Accuracy Ring Byleth stole and put them into the Convoy. (In retrospect it might've been a good idea for Edelgard to hold onto the accuracy ring.) Then I had her grab a Training Axe from Convoy and Equip it. Before Repoing Byleth out of harm's way. Some shuffling around later, and everyone's set up like this. End of turn 4. And now the reinforcements start spawning from the gates. (And every even turn from now on, IRRC.) As you can see it's 2 of the same type from each gate. And I'll stop mentioning when the spawn from now on. The game also gives us another reminder to kill the gate guards. Although this time it does say 'stop' rather than 'delay.' Enemy Phase combat. Turn starts like this, and we're getting pressured from the top, left, and right sides. Bernadetta kills a Wyvern first thing, so right side stops being a problem. Fishing for crits, but it doesn't happen. Doop. (This is the mook in front of Edelgard, in case it's hard to see.) Jeritza busts out his Personal Lance, and ends up OHKOing with a crit. I have Byleth Wait over here for Alert Stance and then Annette buffs her. And a dance. And Byleth things. There's no real need to go through all this trouble to deal with Hilda, though. This was a total of 4 unit-turns spent (or 3, depending on whether or not you count Dorothea's turn) just to kill Hilda in one round, which is more than enough to just kill her with spells or arrows or whatever. And even if you didn't have that many turns you can always just gambit one of Hilda's mooks (Hilda herself has way too much charm for gambits to be reliable against her) with an AoE gambit to stop Hilda's movement. We do need Byleth up here to make a wall against the Paladins, though. Killer Bow poking. It has Speed, so I'll take it, but Strength is more important. Leonie Cantos back to safety, and Lysithea finishes the mook off. (He's 12 hp because Leonie crit once.) I double check that the Paladins have garbage for stats. (Not Bow Knight level garbage, but it's still bad.) And get Edelgard to kill the warrior in front of her. The Paladins don't 2RKO Edelgard so it's fine to leave Byleth and Edelgard blocking for my back liners. Sylvain moves a few squares, and turn 5 ends like this. Enemy Phase combat. Ditto. I notice that Counterattack wore off, so I buff Byleth again. (And a bunch of other people) Here's when I noticed that I messed up with positioning last turn---Bernadetta's full hp again since she sat next to Dorothea for 2 turns---this meant that a Brave Bow wouldn't 2HKO. But the crit lands, so she OHKOs. Byleth flies over here, waits, and gets danced. Rapier only takes regular smithing stones to upgrade/repair, so it's a pretty good general purpose weapon. It's not that strong, but that's not too big of an issue. She's faster than before, not stronger, but I'll take it. And she Cantos over here. Doop. And dead. A crit happens, so the mook explodes. FIshing for crits, but fails. (This guy's full hp because Edelgard missed on enemy phase.) Linhardt tries to help, fails. But Jeritza has the Spear of Assal, so yeah. Sylvain moves up a bit. It's turn 6, so the gate reinforcements will spawn again. Enemy Phase combat. Note how this guy attacked at 2 range, unlike the Sniper from turn 1. No idea why. Axe mooks don't die in 1 round unless Byleth crits, but eh. Rapier + Cichol's is a pretty efficient combo for clearing a map, but we're missing Cichol's right now. More enemy phase. And another one. Doop. And Caspar gets a great level from all those enemy phase combats. Poke. No crit, but eh. Strength and Speed, the only two stats that matter. Killing a Paladin so that the main team has it easier on positioning. Byleth flies down here, and Annette Strides the team. Doop. And doop. This paladin has the anti-cavalry effectiveness shield, still, so Jeritza won't OHKO, but that's fine. Poke. And dead. Doop. The only two stats that matter and a pair of other stats. Linhardt things. Byleth gets danced. And she flies over here to clear out the mooks topside. End of turn 7. Enemy Phase combat. Doop. Doop. And a non-Byleth combat. I actually forgot this guy had a gambit, but he misses so whatever. Doop. And the last guy. A crit lands, so this guy explodes. Getting Caspar another great level. (He hasn't missed Speed in a single level so far, and he got strength in 3/4 levels.) Jeritza kills a Paladin at the start of Player Phase. And we get a pretty great shield. Jeritza cares more about Luck than defense, though. Doop. Canto. Poke. Poke. Canto. Trying to fish for exp. (Fails) Sylvain moves back a square because of the incoming Wyvern Rider, and Bernadetta nabs the kill. Doop. Last Stride. Byleth gets danced. Which got Hubert Fiendish Blow, so he can get into a level 20 class now, assuming I fix his accuracy issues. I swap Byleth to a regular Silver Sword (to deal more damage vs. Nader) and have her Wait over here. Edelgard flies over just in case Byleth needs help. Linhardt things. And end of turn 8. Nader uses his gambit rather than attacking Byleth, but eh, it missed. Enemy Phase combat. Doop. B Axes for Caspar. Doop. Byleth has been getting stupid amounts of Speed lately, although missing Strength on level ups are annoying. Same for Caspar. (This is 5/5 for Speed on this map.) Doop. (This guy lives.) And doop. Player Phase, Byleth tries to do Byleth things, but ends up missing once. So Dorothea dances her. Doop. (Defiant Avoid was active, so a gambit was the best way to kill the guy.) Fliers already hard counter archers, so this doesn't really mean anything. It's decent as a 0 WT 3 defense shield, though. Repoing Dorothea out of the Wyvern Rider's range. In retrospect this was a bit messy, since the Wyvern Rider ORKOs Edelgard. (She does OHKO the rider back, since Byleth weakened it, but Edelgard's accuracy is shaky.) (If only Byleth used a Silver Sword+, there, but I didn't care enough to forge my Silvers into Silver+.) Everyone moves around a bit, and Linhardt does Linhardt things. Doop. That's Lysithea and Annette below the main group, end of turn 9. Edelgard had to dodge a hit or land the counter to live here. Pretty likely, but not something I'd attempt in a world without Divine Pulse. Start of player phase Byleth flies over here and waits. Doop. (Bernadetta's attack without her personal active is a bit sad, since it's like 15 levels of Strength for her.) Doop. Poke. Dead. Poke. And dead. Dancing Byleth. I swap Byleth back to a Silver Sword and start working on the last of the mooks. A bit of moving around and then Linhardt things. I'm not going to bother going all the way to the bottom right just to kill a single bow knight, so we're almost done. Enemy Phase combat. Byleth proc'd her Crest for a bit of bonus damage, so the Wyvern died. And Caspar gets C+ Flying. Effective damage gambits are really disappointing, since the extra damage is based on gambit MT, which tends to be really low. (This misses.) Doop. Byleth flies over here, Dorothea dances her. And doop. And our main team slowly grinds their way towards the last gate guard. Both crits end up landing, so this guy explodes. Poke. Dead. I'll take it. 16 Speed is worrying (as in, 'fail to double armors' worrying), but Magic is basically the only stat that matters for casters at this point. Some moving around and also Linhardt things. It's turn 11 so there's no issues with being so close to the gate. Doop. Not sure why this guy decided to attack rather than use Fusillade, since attacking does jack all but Fusillade only does jack all most of the time, rather than always. Whatever. And Caspar finally misses a level of Speed, but 5/6 isn't bad. 4/6 for Strength, too. Not that Speed matters, since even after those absurdly lucky levels he's only 22 Speed, which is 'doubled by everything' tier. Dancing Byleth. And yoink. Byleth ends turn right next to Claude since he can't attack at 1 range. Poke. Poke. Annette things. And now we'll see something interesting. See how Jeritza has 2% chance to get his face blown off with a crit? That 2% disappears if he uses Glowing Ember, meaning Glowing Ember has a hidden crit avoid bonus. According to https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Glowing_Ember it's 10%, but the info isn't on Serenes Forest. (Unless I'm blind.) Anyway, I end up smacking the guy with Glowing Ember. Doop. And he gives Byleth a Talisman, since we cleared all the gate guards now. End of turn 12. A wait, a dance. And Byleth does Byleth things. As far as I know killing or sparing Claude makes no difference at all? It's not like you get Boots or anything. Doop. And Doop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted February 28, 2020 Author Share Posted February 28, 2020 I seem to be amazingly bad at math. The thing above is Chapter 14, not Chapter 15. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted March 6, 2020 Author Share Posted March 6, 2020 Chapter 15 (For reals this time): First Academy Session. Academy: Spoiler Hanneman's birthday, we had a tea party, it was nice. And +1 Charm for both Byleth and Hanneman. Part 2 Paralogues unlock this month, and we can tell that there's only 2 more months before we reach the end. (Crimson Flower is a very short route.) We have 5 Paralogues total, so we have enough space to do one rare monster sighting in addition to the Paralogues. (I'll try to re-roll for a Gradivus, but if it doesn't show up then it doesn't show up.) And hey, we have a Rare Monster Sighting next week. Some supports from combat. It's a pity I don't have 10 range spells, since support bonuses + 10 range spells is a way to trivially fix accuracy issues, at least on player phase. (And pretty much only Byleth is supposed to take Enemy Phase combats anyway.) Doop. Not sure how much Sylvain's supports will matter, since he's pretty much only brought in when we need another copy of Stride. Doop. This makes Leonie a bit better since she has a Bond support with Alois, although we won't always be able to spare an adjunct slot just to improve our units. (And Alois has good enough stats to make the main team, too, so we don't necessarily want to bench him just to improve Leonie, or vice versa.) Anyway, we have a bunch of Dark Seals in our inventory and Hubert got Fiendish Blow from Mage, so no reason not to get him into Dark Bishop. (Which requires you to have Dark Mage access before you can take the test.) Jeritza fails Wyvern. So I have him test for Soldier. Ran out of Beginner Seals, so I buy 2 more. Exploration: Today's Fish of Mystery, although my fishing had some... interesting results. Quest Stuff: Find a dropped item, get some free tea. Almyra Mercenaries is actually a pretty good E rank battalion, with 5 Str, 10 Avoid, -2 Resistance, and 1 Charm at max level. If you have gigantic skill exp issues you can find some really good E rank battalions out there to use, letting you dump Authority, but it's usually not worth it. Heavily min-maxed E ranks are very useful on Newgame+, though, since this one basically gives everyone access to Bernadetta's Personal. ...Something tells me Newgame+ tosses the difficulty out the window more or less immediately. Find an item, get a free tea and have Anna's Secret Shop open. Anna's shop opens immediately after you complete the quest, but another shop for seeds and smithing stones and whatnot opens the next time you explore. (Or maybe next month, my memory's a bit fuzzy.) Done. And Done. And we spend the renown to make it easier to get some Faith exp. (Just in case I want another copy of Warp, or in case I decide to finally have someone other than Linhardt to be able to use Physic.) Non-Quest Stuff: It was a 5x planting last time, so the Speed Carrots were more or less guaranteed. The usual. Anna's shop starts stocked with a bunch of stat boosters, so we break our piggy bank and buy them all. We end up a bit broke. In addition to stuff we just bought, Anna also has most of the rings (but not March Ring, which is probably the strongest), unlimited Elixirs, and unlimited Master Seals. She also has Silver Shields and a single Hexlock Shield, but shields that weigh you down are pretty garbage now that we have access to 3 Def shields that have 0 WT and also nullify a type of effectiveness. It's weird that the Goddess Ring is the same price to buy as the Prayer Ring, since it's strictly better. Anyway, we have more than enough good accessories to pass around, thanks to all the Paralogues we did, so there's no need to stock up on rings. My gold count is a bit worrying, though, so I sell our obsolete shields. Sold everything up to and including Hexlock. Turns out I had another Hexlock in Byleth's inventory which we stole last map, but I didn't bother going to sell it. (I did convoy it and the Elixir, though, so I can use stat boosters.) The stat boosters Byleth is going to chug. Byleth starts here. And ends here. While we're here, I buyout the 2 highest tiers of bait and the 100g gifts. I figured I'd fish up some Goddess Messengers, meaning we'd have more than enough to cook Deified Fish every month until the game ends. Yeah... that didn't end up happening. I don't really care about cooking stats, though, so whatever. (We were cooking with Edelgard since we seem to be missing some support points to reach A rank with her---which is odd considering how often Byleth tutored her.) Exp grinding for Byleth. Having Jeritza around is pretty handy for Lance and Sword exp. S+ Swords would be ideal, but it takes so much to reach that it'll never come in time to matter, if it comes at all. Cash is a little worrying, so I have Jeritza shoot some losers to death for the rest of the day. Note the level 33 Recommended Level. This joker is the final fight. Still don't know why the Sword Tournament was so randomly hard. We're done with the stuff that takes activity points, but there's still fishing. ... Yeah, I ended up with 3 Strange Fish (which fish up Fodlandy), 5 Gold Fish (for 1 gold and 4 Platinum), and 0 Goddess Fish. Kind of weird since the last time I did Crimson Flower I didn't fish up any Strange Fish after I finished the quest for it, but maybe a update changed the odds. (Or I'm just suffering from small sample size issues.) Anyway, we sell the fish for cash and end up north of 20k again. (We'll never actually have money issues since there's so much random junk I can sell, but I like having cash on hand anyway.) Lecture: Lances for Hubert. It's more efficient to let him self-study Lances and Riding since he already has enough Reason, but it really doesn't matter too much. Level 30 on top of A Riding means you really can't speed up getting into mage cavalry all that much. D Lances. And Frozen Lance. Hubert actually doesn't mind being Cavalier\Paladin because of Frozen Lance, especially if you get him enough sword rank to use Levins, but you should probably have him grab Fiendish Blow from Mage even if you end up doing that. Mage cavalry isn't actually too far away at this point, since B+ Riding is enough to at least see the test. Pity we only have like 4 story maps before the route's done. Look at all that Lance exp Bernadetta is never going to use for anything except getting into Falcon Knight. Tutoring Lances is more efficient than tutoring Riding since Byleth has Professor Expertise. D Lances. And we swap Annette to Lances and Riding since I don't really care about her final Reason spell. (Excalibur is pretty good, mind, but we have a ton of Brave Bow users flying around.) Lysithea has a Weakness in Lances so it doesn't matter if I tutor Riding or Lances, and Riding needs more exp. Shamir might be in Pegasus Knight for a while after level 30, she needs quite a bit of exp yet. B rank Lances. And more flying exp for Jeritza. C Flying. I'll probably keep working on Flying and Axe exp for him, since he's the most combat capable unit I have after Byleth, so another point of movement would help a lot. Bernadetta didn't have any friends coming with her, which was odd. That's 146 to reach B Flying, and 272 or so for B+ Lances, and probably around 100 for C Swords, so Shamir needs around 500 exp to reach the bare minimum to see Falcon Knight as a test option, I believe. B+ Lances for Edelgard, she shouldn't have any issues getting into Falcon immediately at level 30. Ashe got C Authority and C Heavy Armor, Lorenz C+ Authority, and Hanneman C Riding. This fails, but I don't bother resetting because Dark Seals are worth less than a Beginner Seal. Jeritza passes. Wyverns Rider has less Strength than Death Knight, but more Speed, so overall Jeritza is a bit more combat capable now, as well as way more mobile. Ran out of Advanced Seals, so I buy one. This should be the last one of the run, and it's for Ferdinand, on the off chance he gets into the main team. I peek at the monster, and it's Mercurius for the drop. I'll be re-rolling this monster sighting to see if I can get Gradivus, but otherwise I'll just settle for a wolf monster for the Wootz Steel barrier break loot. (I'll be doing the monster map after a pair of Paralogues, though.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted March 8, 2020 Author Share Posted March 8, 2020 Chapter 15: Insurmountable (Edelgard's Paralogue) Map: Spoiler I like how the Calendar goes to great lengths to hide what actually happens this month (if you mouse over the end of the month it says you march into Alliance territory or something), and then the battle menu goes ahead and spoils it. Anyway, all the Paralogues have Suggested Level: 33, but everything generic is level 36 just like in the story map last chapter. (Suggested Levels basically don't mean anything.) Pre-map Planning: The devs have a strange fixation with the preview map being different from the actual map. This is the preview map. And this is what the map actually looks like once you start it. *shrug* Anyway, I won't be listing ally mook stats since we don't actually have ally mooks on this map. The tl;dr of this map is that a bunch of mooks starts on the map, and aggro'd, so they'll run towards you even if you don't head towards them, and 4 wyverns will spawn every turn, 2 from top right, 2 from bottom right, and steadily head towards you. A good brave bow user can ORKO a wyvern every unit-turn, so that means you have 8 unit-turns to deal with everything else once the reinforcement Wyverns start getting into range. Since the Wyverns spawn at the corners you have the full 12 unit-turns for your first few turns, meaning if you push out a bit initially you can make the later bits easier. The reinforcements will stop spawning once you kill a certain Wyvern in each corner, but trying to reach them would usually cause the 3 hawks on the map to aggro (and their aggro seems to be linked), so it's probably better to just wait, deal with the initial flood, and only push out once it's only Wyverns every turn. You won't quite have enough unit-turns to deal with the pace of reinforcement wyverns + the mook on the map, so you do need to push out a bit initially or else use gambits to save unit-turns by immobilizing the mooks you couldn't kill. (Alternatively you can just have your most invested unit murder everyone, of course.) Axebreaker is sort of good here to maybe save a fraction of a unit-turn by letting you counter the Wyvern on enemy phase without always taking a hit, but good bow users should have ORKOs on the Wyverns from full hp, so you don't really need it. (If you're using the Byleth solution Axebreaker on your most invested unit lets you get away with a bit less investment---not a lot less since Wyverns aren't the only thing, but a bit.) Warriors are warriors, strong, decent fast, and hits like a truck. 5 movement means you shouldn't have too much trouble controlling what combats they get to dish out, though. Bow Knights are still bow knights. They have range, they have mobility, they don't have combat. 120 hit and -20 per square above 2... The terrain is better for these guys this time around, since you need to push out really far to get to bushes and thickets, but unless your lineup is entirely mages or something you shouldn't have problems controlling Bow Knight movement either. They're still Maddening Part 2 mooks, so getting shot by 2 of these guys tends to be pretty lethal, but non-mages can usually take the first round without any issues. Some of them have battalions, but they don't add accuracy so who cares if they have one or not. (The gambit is assault troop, not that it matters.) Wyvern Riders are pretty spooky, and 4 of them will reinforce every turn. 56 Atk is only 1 less than the Warriors, and 30 Speed is fast enough to double most of your lineup, meaning they should have ORKOs on the majority of your mooks. 56 HP means you probably can't OHKO with magic despite their 8 Res, but a Brave Bow tends to ORKO them unless you're using some awful archers. These guys aren't dangerous at all, to be honest. 31 Speed is good, but 34 Atk doesn't even kill Fortress Knight bases. Their biggest issue is how much unit-turns you need to spend on them to grab their barrier break loot. If you aren't worried about turn count then you should probably wait until the enemy mook density thins out a bit before pulling them. I mean, okay... These guys have 22 AS and 48 Atk with their sword, I believe. Some of your mooks might be seeing ORKOs from these guys, but mostly they just dish out 2RKOs like everything else. Seal Magic is interesting, assuming that is Seal Magic, but your mages should be doing like 80-90% of a mook's damage every hit, so -6 Magic isn't exactly going to change that 2HKO into a 3HKO. Their real threat is how tanky they are on both sides, thanks to 28 Def and 24 Res, but 24 AS means they're slow enough that most people who have Darting Blow should double them without problems, so you should have a few people with ORKOs on them. If your mages were speed blessed you can probably have them counter-attack for a bit on chip damage on enemy phase, but 4 movement means that it'll be hard to get them out of harms way if a bow knight rides up later. There's a few generic Snipers on this map, and they're pretty close to Bow Knights in terms of threat level. (Not very.) (The screenshot is taken in the middle of the map, since I forgot to grab their stats during the preview.) Anyway, that's the generics taken care of, so let's get onto the mooks with phat loot. This guy near the bottom middle of the map has a Goddess Icon that you can steal. It won't drop when you kill him, so you do need to have Steal. Here's the Wyvern Lord you need to kill to stop the bottom reinforcements. Because he's a Wyvern Lord he has 8 move, meaning you can't pull the mook next to him without pulling him. He has a battalion, so don't worry about the guy suiciding into your sword when you pull him, which should make it easier to steal from him. (Since you need 9 effective movement to Steal from him before he gets an enemy phase combat against your thief.) Here's the battalion for the flying mooks, even Nader has the exact same one. Assault Troop is the gambit. There's a Sniper up here with a Killer Bow, his battalion is pretty good, so he actually has more Atk than the Silver Mook generic Snipers, but he's positioned in a weird cliff that fliers can easily get to and murder him without worrying about getting shot at. And you don't even need to steal the Silver Shield from him, he'll drop it when you murder him. Top Right Wyvern Lord has an Energy Drop to steal. Unlike the bottom Wyvern Lord, you can pull his sidekick mooks without this guy getting a hit in, thanks to the way they're positioned. And here's Nader. You can steal the Aurora Shield, again, but this time he has two weapons rather than one. He's right next to bushes and only has 103 hit with a brave axe so just about everyone should be able to murder him, but watch out for Pavise if you're relying on a OHKO to prevent the counter. He also doesn't move, so you can just plink him down with bows even if he still has the shield on him. 3 Stat boosters and a pretty okay shield to steal, so having a good thief is pretty nice for this map. It's actually slightly better to have someone other than your most invested unit to be the thief on this map, since that'll let you steal from the Wyvern Lords and kill them on the same turn, but it doesn't matter too much. (You keep the thief safe by having them sit in Assassin, Stealth means they don't get targeted unless no other targets are available.) We have 12 deployment slots, so some of our backup fliers are brought into the main lineup. Ferdinand with a Knowledge Gem is attached to Linhardt as you can see, Alois with an exp gem to Byleth, and Hubert with a Knowledge Gem to Dorothea. Here you can see Edelgard taking Bernadetta's Iron Bow+. The Iron+ is accurate enough that even without Bow Prowess it's comparable to using an Axe against fliers, and it'll let her poke at them without getting countered. We won a Silver Bow+ in a tournament, so Bernadetta picks it up to fill the void left by the Iron Bow. We do some forging. Rapier only takes smithing stones to forge/repair, and it's reasonably cheap to do that considering how many uses you get out of it. A Rapier+ is almost a lightweight Killer Sword with double the uses, so it's pretty nice for general purpose use as long as you have a good sword arm. (This was on Byleth.) Also Byleth, forging up a Silver Sword to Silver+ in case the Rapier doesn't hit hard enough. Leonie, her killer bow was almost broken so I forge it into a Killer+. In retrospect I should've given her a Steel or something for attacking at 3 range, rather than burning expensive Killer+ uses, but cash isn't really an issue so whatever. Leonie's inventory after the forge. Look at all those lances she's never going to swing. Byleth's inventory. Not sure why I bother keeping the Steel+ around since I always use the rapier over it, but her inventory doesn't really matter since she has access to the full convoy. Caspar picks up a bunch of Axes, and also an Aurora Shield. Now that Jeritza is in Wyvern Axes do more damage than Lances, so he convoys his Training Lance+ for a Training Axe. Caspar swaps out Lance Prowess for Lancebreaker. I don't think any enemy mook actually uses lances on this map, but it'll be more useful than Lance Prowess in general. Replenishing Battalions. Our team got a few new fliers, so Byleth swaps back to Cichol so we have more battalions to pass out. Jeritza picks up the Galatea. And Caspar picks up the Seiros Pegasus Co. we had since forever. The Map: This is more a nuisance than anything else, mostly it just means you'll want to keep enough people near the exit to intercept everything, so you don't get to just deathball around the map starting from turn 1. But Byleth is about as strong as the entire rest of the team combined, so we don't really need to deathball, really. Counterattack for Byleth. Edelgard Cantos out of the Bow Knight's range, and Linhardt Warps Byleth forward. For a level of basically ever stat that he doesn't need, and Luck. Jeritza got Counterattack as well, so he goes to bait a Bow Knight from the top. One interesting thing about this picture. Linhardt is in range right now. And if I have Caspar swap to a lighter weapon the bow knight changes targets to Linhardt, which, as you can see, is a ORKO, albeit unreliable. I have a feeling the AI prediction was straight up lying about targeting Caspar when he's doubled, and the bow knight would go for Linhardt even if it says it would go for Caspar. Anyway, can't have Linhardt dying on us, so I have Dorothea dance him. And Linhardt drags her out of harms way. I reshuffle everyone top, and have Annette buff Caspar to make him better at smacking the bow knight around on EP. Byleth flies over here, dismounts, and starts doing Byleth things. End of turn 1. Wyverns reinforce from the top. Wyverns reinforce from the bottom. Going to stop mentioning these guys from now on since they'll keep flooding in. Those sure are some numbers. Byleth didn't crit so this guy lived. A+ Authority for Byleth, not that she ever bothers equipping it. This guy gets critical'd, and explodes. Getting Alois a pretty great level. Strength is the most important stat, followed by Dex. Speed is nice if you luck into a ton of it, but you do need a ton to keep up with how fast everything is on Maddening. C Flying for Alois. The 2% crit is annoying, but not too concerning thanks to Divine Pulse. Bow Knight doing bow knight things. (Attacking for 0 damage and then dying on the counter.) Ditto, except this time it's Jeritza doing the counter. Getting him a great level. Unlike just about everyone else Jeritza does have enough Speed to care about it, and his personal lance* is accurate enough that he doesn't worry too much about Dex for accuracy. *Strictly speaking anyone with A Lances can use it, but it'd be hard to find a stronger lance user than Jeritza. I mean, aside from Byleth, but Byleth doesn't really care too much what she swings around. Byleth runs over here and unequips her Rapier. Since we don't want this guy to explode to her counter. The training axe is going to get a lot of use this map. My mages aren't min-maxed enough to provide proper support, so even this late into the game accuracy is an issue. (2 or 3 mages with 10 range tomes and everyone gets something like 20 or 30 accuracy for free, as long as you move the mages last and don't mind spell shuffling a lot.) Caspar Cantos back here, and Annette buffs him. Red line is another Bow Knight. Another Bow Knight is incoming top, and Jeritza goes to handle it. I shift some people down in case I want them to help Byleth. (Byleth doesn't need help killing things, but that's kind of why she needs help---Byleth kills things so fast that she can't break a monster's barrier completely before killing it.) Dancing Caspar for a bit of extra stats. The +4 Luck will get him into 0% crit range, which is nice. The non-Byleth side of things ends like this. (Caspar flew to the heal tile.) End of turn 2. If you look carefully on the map, you can see that the Wyverns from bottom right are flying straight up after they come in. I'm not sure if that's specifically coded or if they're just trying to avoid Byleth. Bow Knight not quite doing Bow Knight things, since he doesn't die to Caspar's counter. Same here, since Byleth unequipped her sword to be nice. (And wow that's some crazy suicidal positioning, backing yourself into a corner against Byleth of all people.) Bow Knight doing Bow Knight things. I have Byleth equip her Rapier and then yoink the Goddess Icon from this guy. And she Cantos forward. (Not a lot, since I'm avoiding the Hawk's aggro range.) A lot of mooks are coming in middle, so I don't bother sending people to Byleth (especially since the Wyvern reinforcements bottom are avoiding her, meaning I'll need at least 2 extra unit-turns every turn middle). Sylvain uses Stride so taking combats is easier. And he goes down here since the Axe mook opted to rush towards the team rather than towards Byleth, so someone needs to handle the guy eventually. This Bow Knight would make positioning annoying for my squishy back liners, so I send Edelgard in to try and take care of it. Edelgard missed twice, but that's fine since Leonie can just come in and Knightkneeler the Bow Knight for lethal. Canto. Annette things for Caspar since he doesn't double without the +4 Speed. And Caspar kills a guy. (The Flier vs. Bow user matchup is so strange in Three Houses...) Canto. It's probably safe to have Lysithea counter the Mortal Savant on EP, but I didn't bother checking the map so she smacks this guy from safety instead. Doop. Canto. Bernadetta flies down here, and Dorothea dances her. And Bernadetta trade swaps Edelgard to an Iron Bow. It's a little dangerous since Edelgard will see a bit higher crit chance like this, but she sees positive crit chances anyway thanks to her low luck. (And the fact that every single Goddess Icon is getting stapled to Byleth.) Some last bits of shuffling units around. End of turn 3. Wyverns reinforcements will start reaching my mooks in 1 or 2 more turns, but as you can see most of the initial mooks are taken care of already. If you want to be safe and secure now's a good time to sit tight, chill, and maybe launch a few ballista bolts at the incoming Wyverns while you take care of the last of the initial set of mooks. (Namely the snipers that you can see in the middle of the map.) Bow Knight doing not Bow Knight things, since it doesn't die. 3% Crit is annoying, but I didn't feel like using a lance for this guy. (Lance Prowess lv. 5 would've pushed the crit chance to 0, I believe.) This guy went for Leonie, which was interesting. I guess even in Wyvern Edelgard has more Resistance than Leonie. Enemy Phase Byleth things. The Wyvern died to a crit, so Byleth does player phase Byleth things to this guy. Canto. I forgot that the Wyvern Lord had a gambit, meaning it was fine to end turn inside his range. (Since he'd attempt a gambit rather than suiciding to Byleth.) I believe that's the last Bow Knight on the map over there on the right, and he's followed by a pair of Snipers. Shamir pokes this guy for some damage. Not a fan of Edelgard's shaky accuracy, but Falcon will help a bit by having 3 more Dex than Wyvern Rider. Canto. Dance. Dorothea almost has enough Speed to consistently avoid doubles now, but having her take combats is still something of a last resort. And Hubert gets a pretty good level. Speed only matters for doubling armors since mages tend to explode to everything, anyway, so Magic and accuracy are all that matters. Poke. Canto to safety + closer to top, where the reinforcement Wyverns are going to be coming. And dead. Caspar's been getting a lot of Speed for whatever reason. Although obviously his low ass Speed bases are still haunting him. Canto. Devil Axe to trigger Bernadetta's Personal. I have Leonie land here on the off chance the Bow Knight decides to go for her instead, but according to the AI that's not going to happen. Linhardt heals her to nearly full anyway, though. Sylvain moves over here and Annette helps out in patching people up. Doop. Non-Byleth side ends like this, and we can see the first of the reinforcement Wyverns incoming. End of turn 4. (Bunch of Wyvern pansies going around Byleth rather than suiciding into her sword---you can see the the weird dodge movement the axe users streaming in from bottom right are making to avoid her 'horrible death radius'™, meaning the main team has to spend some extra unit-turns to deal with them.) Enemy Phase starts off with a relatively non-eventful exchange of axes to the face. That 7% crit is a bit of a yikes, but whatever. The Hawk sees Byleth and goes for her. And Byleth proceeds to take off its first hp bar with a crit. It says a lot about Byleth's caps that she's still around 15 points away from capping Speed. And about 30 points away from capping anything else. (Except Charm, which caps at 99.) Anyway, on player phase Byleth flies over to the Wyvern Lord (she has boots so she can reach him even though he can't reach her), convoys the Goddess Icon from earlier, and yoinks this guy's Seraph Robe. And here we can see the Hawks starting to move towards us. A bit annoying, but we have enough large AoE gambits that we don't need to spend all the unit-turns needed to kill them in a single turn. Doop. Magic is basically the only stat that matters for Lysithea at this point, thanks to her battalion giving her 30% accuracy at max level. (Having enough Speed to double people is nice, but you need major luck for that to happen on Maddening. And Dark Magic is heavy as hell anyway.) Brave Bows beings great. (Although Shamir might be pretty close to getting a OHKO with a Silver+ and a combat Art, not that I checked her damage for that.) Canto. (Since it's pretty suicidal to end turn in a Wyvern's range.) Doop. The Snipers are in pretty annoying spots, so Annette uses a Stride. Which lets Linhardt run all the way down here to Warp Bernadetta forward. Dorothea swaps to Thunder so she can provide support bonuses, and gambits 3/4 of these guys into immobility. (The rightmost Wyvern is out of AoE for the gambit.) So Bernadetta kills it. Bernadetta Cantos a bit back so incoming Wyverns don't cave her face in, and Sylvain kill a mook. B Riding, not that it matters. +1 move will be nice to have, eventually, but people on horses aren't the people slowing the team down. Sylvain Cantos back, and Edelgard kills the other Sniper. It has Strength, so I'll take it. I'll need to swap Edelgard into a battalion with extra accuracy once another flier hits A Authority, since her combat issues is basically entirely tied to her low Dex and Prowess levels. Caspar doesn't have anything else to do, so he tosses a short axe at this guy. End of turn 5. We've dealt with all the mooks that start aggro'd, so at this point it's just mop up. Normally now's the time to start pushing forward, but Byleth can handle that by herself, so everyone else gets to just sit near the exit. Enemy Phase Byleth things. Strength! Speed! (But no Dex.) Unlike Edelgard Alois is pretty close to level 5 Axe Prowess, though, so accuracy isn't as big as an issue for him. Another boring exchange of Axes to the face on enemy phase, although it's Edelgard rather than Jeritza this time. Byleth things. Doop. And doop. The bird is still in range of Byleth, so it flies in and Byleth crits it off the map. Meaning I lost some Mythril, but eh. (I had 9 mythril at the start of map, so I only needed 1 more for Gradivus.) On player phase Byleth flies over here to start intercepting some of the reinforcements. Doop. Canto. Doop. Fishing for crits, since Leonie doesn't get to play with Brave Bows. Doesn't happen, and she Cantos over here, next to where Bernadetta Canto'd earlier. Iron+ weapons tend to be either tied or more accurate than Training weapons, something to keep in mind when your students start being able to handle weightier weapons. (The pair of support bonuses also help with Edelgard's accuracy, of course.) This lands. And doop. Everyone Canto'd back here, and Linhardt does Linhardt things. Getting Ferdinand a decent level. Dance. And more Linhardt things. This is pure exp farming, though. Non-Byleth side ends like this. End of turn 6. It's turn 6, so Counterattack wore off, meaning this Bow Knight manages to live through enemy phase. This was a Wyvern Lord from next to Nader, I believe, hence why it has enough hp to barely survive a Byleth double. (She didn't crit, so the guy actually lives through this combat.) And this guy keeps praying for the Assault Troop to work. Player Phase happens, and Byleth happens to this guy. Canto. She flew pretty close to the middle of the map to catch more reinforcements. Doop. Canto. Fishing for a crit, which doesn't happen. The only two stats she needs, so it's great. (25 Dex is enough accuracy for the whole game, pretty much.) Leonie Cantos back here, and Annette Strides most of the group. B+ Authority, not that it really matters. Poke, which lands. The Sylvain pokes were actually important, since it lets Caspar smash a training axe for 100% accuracy rather than using one of the less accurate axes due to damage concerns. Canto. Luring this guy closer to the team. Canto. Doop. Canto. Poke. And Poke. The minimum roll, but it's all we need. Edelgard moves a little to provide support for the other hawk, and Dorothea dances Lysithea. Between monsters having low Charm and some help from support bonuses, Linhardt has a 100% gambit to stun the hawk and immobilize the Wyvern. For another min roll Mythril, which is basically only useful for selling for cash. And Lysithea finishes this guy off. End of turn 7. Pretty much just mop up now, since we'll have more than enough unit-turns to deal with everything on player phase from now on. Enemy Phase Byleth things. Getting Alois... a sad level. Byleth moves up to intercept more reinforcements. Poke. Dead. First hp bar. Poke. Another poke. And dead. Some shuffling around, and Annette buffs Jeritza for enemy phase. Exp farming. A+ Faith. Doesn't really matter since accuracy isn't a concern and Linhardt dodging things to tank is a joke. S rank might be a little useful for a bit of extra attack range, but we have +range staves, so it doesn't matter too much. Non-Byleth side ends like this. End of turn 8. I should probably forge a Iron Axe for Jeritza or something, since he's missing ORKOs even with Annette buffs. And Byleth things---I think I'm going to skip the pictures of Byleth murdering everyone one by one on EP. A+ Swords. So Byleth is only missing Alert Stance+ before she enters full powered territory. (Not that she needs to be 100% to murder everything.) Start of turn the map looks like this. We left the bottom Wyvern Lord alive for a while so there's still some reinforcements coming from that side, but it's not too important. Byleth flies here to intercept more reinforcements & get into position to kill the sniper. Doop. Since this is a Silver Bow, a Silver+ and Heavy Draw probably is enough to OHKO. Probably should've been doing that instead of using a Brave Bow, but oh well. Exp farming. Striding Leonie. So she can take the kill. People shuffle around, and turn 9 ends like this. We almost outnumber the enemy mooks now. Enemy Phase combat, one of the Wyvern Lord's sidekick mooks, I believe. The Wyvern Lord aggro'd from that, so Byleth swoops in, convoys her Steel Sword+ (which she never used), and the loot from last time, and yoinks the Energy Drop. Canto. Really wasteful Brave Bow usage here, since we aren't under unit-turn pressure. Oh well. Poke. And dead. Exp farming. Jeritza moves here and gets danced for some buffs. More buffs. Some shuffling around, and turn ends like this, with Jeritza in range to fight a Wyvern. End of turn 10. Enemy Phase combat. Byleth does Byleth things to a bunch of mooks on EP. Except this guy, who gets to live thanks to his gambit. The ORKO isn't reliable, so Byleth just gambits the dude and stays in place. Being rattled means you can't use gambits yourself, so this forces the guy to suicide into Byleth on EP. Fishing for crits. (Which happens.) Poke. Dead. That training axe got a lot of use int his map, thanks to all the smashing for accuracy. Linhardt things. Bishop mastered, so he gets Renewal. Not very useful unless you wind up in a situation where you're fighting mages one at a time. (Since 2 Warlocks would probably KO even res heavy units.) It's too much of a detour for a physical unit to grab Renewal, and you're better off getting Alert Stance with that exp anyway, don't need healing if you take 0 damage. Doop. Some moving around, Annette buffs Jeritza. A dance. And turn ends like this. End of turn 11. Jeritza's EP combat. And Byleth once again does a bunch of Byleth things on EP. Getting Alois a great level. No need to steal from this guy to take the shield, so Byleth just kills him. (Using the Silver+ since the Rapier is running low on uses.) It sells for a bit of gold, at least, although it's not really useful for anything at this point. Canto. Linhardt things. Dance. And doop. Poke. And dead. The team starts moving towards the boss, not that they'll make it in time to matter. A bunch of Byleth things on EP. On player phase, Byleth lands, convoys some stuff, dismounts, and yoinks the Aurora Shield. Exp farming. End of turn 13. Nader is actually strong enough to do decent damage with Assault Troop, but good luck landing gambits against someone with 50 Charm. On player phase Linhardt does some exp farming. So does Dorothea. And Byleth crits Nader's face into the ground. Doop. Useful for Bernadetta, but not many people else, since we'll only be doing 2 Paralogues this time. Doop. Holst's Chosen is pretty okay as a C rank battalion, although you can do better. It has 7 Str, 5 hit, 5 crit, 7 Defense, and 3 Charm at max level. And it has the boring Assault Troop as the gambit. The physical stats are pretty good, but its low charm means you probably won't be hitting with the gambit all that much. C rank is also enough to start using the personal battalions like Supreme Armored Co., so it's competing with some pretty amazing stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted March 21, 2020 Author Share Posted March 21, 2020 Chapter 15: Foreign Land and Sky (Petra and Bernadetta's Paralogue) Map: Spoiler Doop. Bernadetta's part of the main team, so she won't have problems contributing. (Well okay the fact that it's pretty annoying to get her Personal active at this point is annoying, but I don't care enough to get Death Blow or Bow Faire for her.) Petra's crazy underleveled, but she has reposition and access to Pegasus Knight, so she's basically a warp staffer with infinite uses on Warp. (It's a really low ranged Warp, but skills that affect positioning are crazy strong.) Pre-map Planning: The game hides quite a bit of information from you on this map, which is annoying as hell, but at least there's only 2 waves of reinforcements max for the enemy side (and 1 wave for your side), so that's 2 Divine Pulses at most. I'm very much not a fan of maps that rely on Divine Pulse uses to be 'fair,' but at least it's not a god damn fog of war map. Anyway, let's take a look around the map, first. Left side we have a bunch of Holy Knights (first time we see them on the enemy side, I think?), Heroes, and Warlocks. And also a single Fortress Knight. The mobility of the Holy Knights are the biggest concern, since they have good reach focus fire people to death, and Heroes can probably ORKO a significant amount of your units. Handling this side is mostly about somehow immobilizing the first 2 Holy Knights and making sure everyone ends turn out of range of anything other than the last Holy Knight. There's also the Byleth solution, of course. Here we have the enemy Heroes' stats. I like to use enemy Heroes as a benchmark for how much Speed you want to be considered a 'fast' player controlled unit. They're usually not crazy speedsters, but if you can keep up with Hero Speed growths you can probably rely on not being doubled during combats. And if you have enough Speed to double them you have enough for most enemy types. 51 Atk means they hit hard enough to 2HKO most things, and anyone with less than 33 Speed is going to get wrecked in a single round. Unfortunately 'less than 33 Speed' is like 70% of our team or something---Maddening stats are annoying unless you're into eating 4 Speed fish every month. That say, you can reasonably expect to have that 30% or so of people who are fast enough to avoid the double, so they're not too dangerous as long they don't get to gang up on people. Holy Knights are pretty much just magical Paladins. Slow, hits reasonably hard, has pretty good mobility. (They have 1 less movement but 1 more range, so their threat range is pretty much the same.) Nobody should be getting OHKOd by them, and only your very slowest units should be getting doubled, so the main issue with them is just making sure you aren't in danger of getting smacked by two of them at the same time. Notably they only have 3 uses of Aura because they end up without any offensive spells, so if you're feeling trollish you can run them out of spells rather than killing them. Not much point to that outside of exp farming, though, since you'll need 2 rounds minimum to run them out of spells and it's pretty easy to get ORKOs or 2RKOs on them. Warlocks don't hit too much harder than Holy Knights, but they do get 4 more Speed, which is enough that your underleveled units are probably in danger of getting doubled to death. And your team is probably mostly underleveled units, so yeah. On the plus side, 4 movement is a bad joke, and they crumple like tissue paper to physical damage, so they're less threatening than Holy Knights. (Looking at their stats I'm actually a little surprised, expected them to have way more Atk than Holy Knight---but I guess Part 2 leaves Gremorys to be the enemy 'walking nuke' nuke.) Here's the Fortress Knight. At 13 AS it's actually fast enough to avoid doubles from Linhardt, but that's mostly because Nosferatu is heavy as hell, and I haven't bothered getting Wind from him. Aside from that it's just a speed bump and exp pinata. The Heroes with battalions have Seiros Mercs. Pretty okay, but not really interesting. (It does bump their accuracy to 133, but there's bushes on this map so it's really more like 103, which is trivial to reach.) The gambit is onslaught. The Fortress Knight has this for the battalion. Pretty much completely useless. Gambit is also onslaught. In the middle, surrounded by trees are some Fortress Knights, Swordmasters, a Sniper, and what looks like a Bishop. (I didn't notice it was Bishop until now, so I didn't take a screenshot for its stats. But it probably has typical healer stats---i.e. total garbage.) Since they're surrounded by trees it's pretty easy to control how many combats you take on enemy phase, and the incoming damage is even mostly physical, meaning you can take advantage of the extra avoidance from terrain. Swordmasters are pretty damn dangerous, with 50 Atk and 43 AS. Practically speaking, these guys should double just about your entire lineup. They have Quick Riposte, so you'll never be able to double them on player phase, but you probably want to be nuking these guys with magical damage anyway, and mages tend to go for 2RKOs rather than 1RKOS. (Or OHKOs after some AoE gambit damage.) 63 Avoidance and the amount of trees means you'll want to be careful trying to attack them with physical damage, but support bonuses should be large enough now that accuracy isn't an issue. (And you can always just grab a 30% accuracy battalion or something.) 127 Hit, because that's going to hit things with the 20% range penalty and 30% trees... Aside from that they're slightly more threatening than Warlocks, since they do have 2 extra threat range, and Maddening means even these guys probably have 2RKOs on most of your team. (Maybe even ORKOs on some of your mages, unless you gave them Fortress Knight bases and a physical battalion.) Some of the snipers have Battalions, though, which give them 15 more accuracy and fusillade. On the right side we have a Sniper and three Swordmasters. Some Fortress Knights pop out in an ambush if Petra ends her turn around here, so make sure to move her first if you're going in this direction, so you can clean up the reinforcements before enemy phase. I didn't trigger the reinforcements when I did the map, since I didn't know Petra was the trigger, although I did remember two different waves from the last time I played this map. The Swordmaster is a little scary, thanks to Indech Sword Fighters, but on the plus side Retribution (the Counterattack gambit), is basically a blank gambit in AI hands. And on the bottom of the map, before we reach the fake victory condition, we have two different groups. The left group is Pegasus Knight, Sniper, Warlock, and Fortress Knight, which is pretty much a harmless combination since you just lure the Pegasus Knight by itself and then kill the rest easily since they have such awful threat range. The right group has a Paladin and a bunch of things we've already seen before. You can't just ignore Heroes, since their stats are pretty decent, but they're not crazy scary either. Falcon Knights are pretty much just flying Heroes in terms of threat. Flying means they're more mobile, but also die easier to your bow users. They do lose a bit of Atk compared to Heroes, but not enough that it changes their ORKO abilities much. Paladins, still boring. Although you should pay attention to the Speed of this guy in particular. (He has Weight -3 for some reason, so he has 29 AS, which isn't too shabby.) The enemies pretty much wait for you to come to them until Petra gets close to the exit (or you rout), at which time a ton of reinforcements will spawn, and if you let the commanders reach the exit that's a loss. If you know the triggers beforehand and also know where they spawn it's pretty easy, though. And even if you didn't someone like Byleth has a pretty good shot at just killing every commander before they reach the exit. General strategy is just deathball around the map until you're ready to deal with the reinforcements. Since they're trigger on Petra ending her turn (but not you ending your player phase), they can spawn on player phase with most of your units still having turns, so if you know where they're going to spawn you can just camp their spawn points. Having Byleth sit on the exit and killing everyone is also an option. Another copy of Stride would've been nice, but not too necessary, so Sylvain got dropped to let Leonie into the lineup. Our damage is physical heavy right now, but until the team makes the transition to mage cavalry magic damage will always be less mobile than physical, so it's not worth trying to stuff more mages into the team. (Unless I swap the mages into Cavalier and give them Levins---the resource shop for arcane stones should open next week, so that'll be an option soon.) Anyway, Caspar and Hubert have Knowledge Gems, Alois the exp gem. Caspar doesn't have an exp gem because he's pretty close to level 30 already, and a faster Wyvern Lord is a bigger boost than a few levels---he's still missing quite a bit of exp for Wyvern. Caspar is on Byleth, Hubert Dorothea, and Alois stapled to Leonie for the bond bonus. Byleth is going through sword uses pretty fast, so we're in the black smith to fix some of them. About 1.6k to repair the rapier. And about 2k for a Silver Sword+. No way Petra survives any physical combats, so I give her some bows on the off chance she gets to hit things. Aurora Shield, too, since the reason she was benched was Strength rather than Speed, so this'll give her a good shot at surviving a round from most things on the map. (She's fast enough to avoid doubles from Snipers.) Byleth is such a wall of stats at this point that we don't even need HP +5 anymore, so I give her Authority. Petra's skills don't matter, but here they are. Ditto combat arts, other than Reposition. Honestly, Canto, 6 movement, and Reposition already makes her acceptable to bring into the team. The reason she's bench isn't that she's not useful, it's that we have better units. (Like Edelgard, for example, who has actual damage on top of having Reposition.) Battalion replenishment. Caspar's being an Adjunct, so Petra borrows his battalion for a map. Lysithea goes Warlock since her battalion is now high enough level that all her accuracy issues are fixed, so this'll give her a little more Atk and Speed, although the Speed isn't too useful. The Map: Got to love mission requirements that are full of shit... Petra also mentions that she can summon some reinforcements if you get her to the fort in the West. Anyway, first I highlight the threat ranges of the mooks behind the 2nd Holy Knight to let me know where is safe to stand at end of turn. Retribution for Byleth. (The order was wrong, to be honest, I should've had Annette Stride first so Edelgard can Canto further, but the nice thing about high mobility teams is that you can play really sloppy and get away with it---you rarely need all your mobility, so you can afford to waste a lot most of the time.) Edelgard Cantos left and Annette Strides everyone. 14 MT of effective damage hurts like hell---it's comparable to a Brave Weapon when you're fighting cavalry. Pity Mythril is as rare as Wootz Steel. Every stat that matters and also HP. He's level 30, but we won't be seeing Wyvern Lords for a while yet, probably, thanks to the class's skill requirements. Jertiza Cantos here, and Petra trade swaps Edelgard into a Training Axe. For support bonuses vs. the Hero and also more AS in case she gets hit by something on enemy phase. Poke. 10 levels, to bring her to par, would get her around 4 Strength, which still isn't enough to make this number look nice. If you desperately need an avoid tank Petra's good at the job, but don't expect to do any counter-attack damage if you're doing that. : / Petra Cantos back and Lysithea smacks a Hero. Fishing for crits. Even Shamir has a little damage problems since she's not in Sniper or Bow Knight. And dead. Leonie Cantos a bit more forward, Byleth moves a little forward for Alert Stance, and Dorothea dances Byleth. Warping Byleth forward. (I didn't know at the start of map if the reinforcements were time based or movement based, so I wanted to rush Byleth to the exit just in case it's time based.) I mean, at least it has Luck... (31 Resistance still leave him in ORKO range of Gremorys, I believe, thanks to his low Speed.) Byleth does Byleth things. And she ends turn over here. Bernadetta also moved forward a bit (she's the leftmost archer), and we end turn 1. Yeah... Byleth is officially fast and lucky enough to not care about magical attacks, either. 2/3 of the stats that matter isn't bad. I'll skip the rest of the enemy phase combats except: This guy used a gambit, so he survives. Byleth also got a very defensive level during enemy phase, from smacking a Sniper to death. Anyway, start of turn Byleth flies here, dismounts, and waits. Lysithea smacking an armor. Maculi Evil Repelling Co. also gets to level 5 from this, so she has the full 30 Hit now. It's too bad Bernadetta no longer has the bulk or Speed to survive ORKOs in melee range, otherwise I could just have her Devil Axe someone to trigger her Personal. (And I'm also too much of a cheapskate to use Deadeye on Killer weapons.) Bernadetta Cantos back here, and Annette does Annette things. Petra repositions Leonie forward. Petra Cantos back, and Leonie realizes that even +4 Speed doesn't let her double Heroes, feelsbadman. Repo. Dance. And everyone ends turn nice and safe. The middle group is also aggro'd, but they have to walk through a bunch of trees so there's no rush in that direction. End of turn 2. It is technically possible to survive this combat, for the Fortress Knight, but between 49% crit and Byleth occasionally adding damage from her Crest, it's not very likely. Gambit from the Warlock, it's out of gambits. Gambit from the Sniper, it still has a use left. And the combat gets Falcon Knight mastered. It's the pity the two best Falcon Knights (Byleth and Edelgard) don't get much use out of this, since their Crest would heal them out of 25%, so you aren't allowed to rely on it, but it's good for other people trying to dodge tank. (Especially people like Leonie, who don't have Crests, so you can just stack relics/devil weapons to get them to critical ASAP.) But it only comes into play like the last 25% of the game or so, and people like Byleth have been murdering things since the Prologue. It makes Falcon Knight even more bonkers as a class, but it doesn't really affect how units are ranked relative to each other. (Aside from the Female > Male thing.) Start of player phase Byleth murders this guy, since he still has a use of Fusillade. She's standing barely in range of the Paladin, so that guy will suicide into her on enemy phase. Poke. Getting some training axe exp in. ...Losing 5 Atk really sucks when I didn't optimize for damage. Doop. A crit happens, so the dude explodes. And Shamir gets an okay level. Strength is more important than Dex and Speed combined, but it's a nice level nonetheless. Dancing Lysithea. Poke. Lysithea might still have minor accuracy issues versus extremely lucky people, but the fact that she has 100% vs. Swordmasters without support means that it'll probably be like 90%s rather than 100%s, in other words, no big deal. Some movement, and also a Linahard thing. Turns ends like this. End of turn 3. Map is pretty much cleared now, so we're moving into the mop up and slowly march the group forward while waiting for the massive piles of reinforcements stage. Enemy Phase combat. (The Sniper also dies to Byleth, but I'm going to skip that screenshot.) Byleth walks forward even more, to get into range of the last of the mooks down here. Dead. Linhardt cries at the fact he can't even double Fortress Knights. Bernadetta also cries, although for Atk related reason rather than Speed related reasons. Poke. Dance. Well that was a pointless level. Charm gives her a little more accuracy on gambits, at least. Getting more axe exp in. C+ Flying for Jeritza. That is, Wyvern Lord is a long ways off, yet. Fishing for crits, which doesn't happen. Using Heavy Draw to get to 100% hit rate. Devil Axe to get Bernadetta's Personal active. And dead. Top side ends like this. End of turn 4. The guy gets his face blown off by a crit, despite actually having okayish odds to survive a round against Byleth. Every stat that matters, and also Luck and HP. The combat also masters Wyvern Rider, so here's Seal Defense. Even on Maddening it's not as good as Death Blow, though, since you need to consistently be 3RKOing people before it gets better than Death Blow, and you're using some awful garbage units in that situation. That said, it is comparable to Strength +2, and that's not too bad. (Death Blow, Fiendish Blow, and Darting Blow are just stupid good, so you shouldn't really measure skills with those three as a benchmark.) Only two combats this enemy phase, so no reason not to show them both. The hero and the armor moved forward on Player Phase, so Byleth goes to say 'hi.' The armor has a battalion, so he gets to die first. Doop. Basically ever stat that matters except Dex. (Even Str sort of matters since Dark Magic is heavy enough that Str is pretty much 1/5 of Speed forever---extremely unlikely she gets to 15 Str, though.) Also level 30, so going to want to get her into Dark Knight now. A ranked Reason. Hades is okay at 18 MT, although it's heavy enough that holding it will get you doubled by Fortress Knights. Accuracy is also an issue, but Lysithea's battalion fixes that. If we weren't doing Paralogues more Reason exp still has uses to get +1 range, but at this point neither the minor accuracy from level 5 Prowess nor the +1 range matter too much, so we can pretty much stop caring about Reason exp for Lysithea, now. Team starts moving down and Linhardt does more patching up. Ditto for Annette. Dance exp farming. End of turn 5. This guy dies, incidentally. 79% hit rarely misses thanks to true-hit, and 48% crit is fairly reliable. The game doesn't give you a special command or anything, you have to just make Petra wait on the fort tile. Doop. Dance exp farming. Healing exp farming. And Byleth heads top to start working on the last of the starting mooks. End of turn 6. This ends about as well as could be expected. B+ Axes. Wyvern Lord needs A Flying, A Axes, and C Lances, so Flying is the most important thing left. (Lances are pretty quick to get exp for since Byleth has high ranks in it.) Also, interesting thing about this guy---since Counterattack wore off, he'd rather go for the 0% hit rate Bow attack rather than the 20% or so gambit, seeing how he'd survive either way. Just a weird AI quirk if you ever need to make sure you aren't rattled and immobolized due to bad RNG. (Holding a weapon that doesn't counter, that is.) Anyway, Byleth does Byleth things on player phase. And flies down here to get ready to intercept enemy reinforcements. I wasn't sure about the trigger for the reinforcements until I looked it up after I did the map, so I wanted her ready to handle things. Exp farming. Ditto. End of Turn 7. I could've farmed more exp by having Linhardt heal Bernadetta, but I wanted her Personal active for obvious reasons. Nothing on enemy phase. (The two Swordmasters that are left didn't even aggro from the Sniper dying right next to them.) Ally healer has these stats, not completely awful, but not really good, either. The enemy mook healer probably had slightly better stats, though. Also note the lack of Prowess, they'd get ruined if they actually had to fight something. Our two friendly fortress knights. Not very useful, but passable as meat shields. (They'll survive 1 or 2 rounds from a lot of physical units, which is more than what my units can say.) Note that ally mooks have worse stats compared to enemy mooks in addition to lacking skills. Since reinforcements didn't spawn yet I moved Byleth back up here to keep working on the last of the starting mooks. End of turn 8. Note the group in a Stride ball and Petra off by herself---since it's turn 8 already and since Byleth has been flying all over the map, I was pretty confident it was Petra who triggers thing at this point rather than turn count or your other units. This goes about as well as expected. I forget about our ally mooks, and the guy healers Bernadetta to full hp. : / Should've had Linhardt nab that healing exp. Moving Petra first. Bunch of mooks up here, note that there's two commanders here. Top left, one commander, and they're packed close enough that you can get most of the group in one big gambit. Catherine's mooks bottom left. Also in a good group to get immobolized by one big gambit. I didn't remember to take screenshots until next turn, but here's the stats of the guys who are still alive. Catherine, pretty strong, pretty dodgy, also has immunity to debuffs, which I didn't notice. 130 hit isn't really enough to fight Byleth, though, especially in a map with trees, even if you add in her combat art. Oh and 50 AS on top of 69 Atk with a brave weapon, so everyone who isn't Byleth should stay out of her way. Commander Paladin, pretty strong, pretty fast, 60 Atk when attacking. Can't hit for shit thanks to all the trees and 121 hit. The mook Paladins are identical to the ones we've seen, but the commander Holy Knight is this guy. Carries a Silver Sword for after his Aura runs out (not sure why a Sword rather than a Lance, though), and has Sword Prowess rather than Faith Prowess for some reason. Can't hit for shit thanks to 91 hit, despite the fact that magic ignores evasion from terrain. The battalions are Knights of Seiros, mostly. (This is a generic Paladin.) Got to love randomly changing defeat conditions. On the plus side, the target destination is one square, so you can always just have Byleth sit on it. Map after reinforcements. (I think one of the Holy Knights in the top left group is supposed to be where the ally axe mook is standing, and got pushed off its square. Not 100% sure, though.) Stride. Byleth moves over here, swaps to Creator Sword, and Waits. Lots of battalions up here, so need to make sure to have maximum evasion just in case some of the 20% gambits hit. Fishing for crits. Didn't happen, but Shamir cleans up. Most people have accuracy issues with their gambits, so Dorothea uses one to immobolize everyone. B rank Authority. Doop. 2/3 of the stats that matter, and the two most important ones too. And also Mag, which nobody cares about, including mages. (Since you get so much from skills and battalions.) Warp staffers sort of care about Magic, but my team is mobile enough not to care too much about Warp. Doop. Doop. Basically a blank level, but oh well. Level 30, so she should be able to swap into Falcon Knight now. (I believe she has enough skill exp to try for the test, but not 100% sure.) I do some moving around with the people that couldn't reach enemy mooks, and Linhardt taps this Falcon Knight for some exp. Turn 9 ends like this. Enemy phase is pretty much a mix of this. (Which all miss.) Well, the Paladins have Blaze rather than Assault Troop, so they're forced to suicide after their one use. And this. (Which ends about as well as you'd expect.) B Flying for Caspar. Just need B+ and he's pretty much ready to try for Wyvern Lord, albeit at shaky odds. Anyway, after a bunch of Paladins try and fail to gambit Byleth, the enemy phase ends. So our ally Fortress Knights start doing armor things. (Be completely useless.) *Slow clap* The Bishop heals one of them back to full hp. Player Phase starts, and Byleth murders the Holy Knight commander. And flies down here to start working on the Paladins from Catherine's group. They had the reach to hit our ally Bishop, but went here instead. I'm really not sure how AI works on this map, maybe they only target people who are closer to the target tile than they are? Petra gets out of dodge. Trying to farm some exp, but the shot misses. So Dorothea dances her. And we try again. Not good at all, but I'll take Dex only over no Dex, no Str, and no Speed. Exp farming. If I were more confident about how the AI works (i.e. I was sure that they'll only attack people closer to the goal than they are), I would rush everyone forward right now. But I'm not. End of turn 10. Picture taken moments before disaster. Paladins have Sword Breaker, hence their barely passable accuracy. Not good at all, but it has a bunch of stats and isn't completely empty of stats that matter, so I guess I'll take it. Also level 30, so we're just waiting on skill exp before Caspar goes Wyvern and joins the main team for good. Amazingly enough, this lands. Slightly concerned about incoming damage, so I have Byleth swap to Creator Sword (to force Sniper to attack at 3 range), and Wait. A lance might be better to avoid Sword Breaker, but it doesn't matter too much either way. Alert Stance pushes hit rates to around 20% anyway. Dancing for exp. The Bishop has been in enemy range for ages now, and despite what the target markets are showing, he won't get attacked. I'm still not confident that the AI won't change its mind for player units, so I'm only going to have Lysithea try and bait the Snipers. Annette things. Lysithea swaps to Swarm (her lightest tome), and waits just barely in range of the enemy sniper. Who supposedly wants to target her. If I thought about it a bit more I would've had Jeritza head towards the trees just above the snipers, since he can handle a few shots as long as he's dismounted, and the trees will give him passable odds at dodging. End of turn 11. Still not sure why AI likes to go for 0% attacks rather than 20% gambits. And the turn has a bunch of this. (Byleth ends up healing back to full after the enemy phase thanks to her crest and the fact that Paladins can't hit the broad side of a barn.) Also picks up an almost perfect level from the first Paladin. (Missing Luck.) Start of player phase is like this, where the commander Paladin is trying to BS us into thinking he's going to gambit Byleth rather than going for the win. Byleth isn't buying what he's selling, though, and ends his life. Dance. Bernadetta taking some pot shots. Basically pointless attack since the hit chance is so low, but I wanted her out of Catherine's range before enemy phase starts. Bernadetta ends turn in safety, and we can see the way the AI prediction is feeding us BS. (Catherine and her Snipers keep marching forward.) End of turn 12. Enemy Phase. The other sniper had slightly better odds and slightly better damage, but both miss. Start of turn. Doop. Repoing Lysithea forward. Annette things. Tried for a poke, but it misses. Which was unfortunate, since it meant I couldn't keep Lysithea safe just by killing Catherine. (I didn't trust the AI not to just murder player units.) So I warped Bernadetta forward. This landed, and then Catherine's threat range didn't decrease, and I looked at her kit again. -_- Repoing Lysithea out of Catherine's range. Repo'd the Fortress Knight forward to give Catherine a tastier target than Bernadetta. And Edelgard Canto'd over to block for Lysithea and Petra, making it so the AI wants to kill the Bishop instead of anyone else. It's still a bit risky, though, since the AI programmers could've simply made the enemy AI prioritize player units even if they're 'supposed to' murder an ally mook. Turn 13. But the enemy phase is just Catherine walking forward. Trying for a poke. Repoing Lysithea down. Drawing her back up one square. Repo has to move you two squares, so occasionally you get into situations where it's pointless---repoing Lysithea down another time wouldn't move her any closer to hitting Catherine. And one last Repo for the road. Lysithea is only missing a little bit to KO Catherine, so Byleth uses her gambit to add some splash damage. Doop. Shaky accuracy, but it lands. End of turn 14, just mopping up one last mook left. If I knew Petra triggered the Fortress Knight reinforcements top right I would've mopped those up as well, but I didn't. Skipping over a few turns of Byleth flying up, and Byleth does Byleth things to the Swordmaster on enemy phase. Doop. Bernadetta has full motivation now, and if I ever feel like handing out gifts\lost items that saves me some cash\effort. Doop. Varley Archers is, frankly, a pretty awful Battalion. 0 Str, 0 Mag, 30 Hit, -10 Avoid (minus, not plus), 5 Def, and 7 Charm isn't going to cut it. The thing gives worse physical stats than an A ranked magical battalion. Gambit is Fusillade. Brigid Hunter isn't too interesting, either, but it does have decent stats, especially if you're into avoid tanking. It's B ranked, and gives 4 Str, -2 Mag, 10 crit, 20 avoid, and 7 Charm. There's better options out there, and fliers can't equip it, though, so it's not too relevant. I mean, it's not completely useless, but it's almost there. 3 Str, 10 Hit, 10 Crit, and 1 Charm. It's E ranked, but there's better E ranks out there. If these guys are the stuff Brigid has then it's kind of obvious why Foldan kicked their ass during their wars. Anyway, after the Paralogue I rerolled for Gradivus 14 times or so, but it didn't pop up, so I ended up settling for a wolf for Wootz Steel. (Saw the Bow, Axe, and Sword 2 or 3 times each, though.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted March 28, 2020 Author Share Posted March 28, 2020 Chapter 15: Rare Monster Sighting & 2nd Academy Session Rare Monster Sighting, tl;dr version: Spoiler Suggested Level is 33 just like the Paralogues, but because the mooks are mostly level 20 stuff it plays more like a suggested level 23 map. Unless you buy the DLC the non-Paralogues are pretty much complete face-rolls. Pre-Map Planning: Not a very important map so I'm just going to give a tl;dr, pretty much, with screenshots of notable events. The monster is this guy, no Graivus, but whatever. I gave up after 15 or so retries and settled for some Wootz Steel instead. (Won't be forging Mercurius, Mythril will go toward repairing the semi-relics.) Armor Knight mook on the map, surprisingly fast at 15 AS, but he's still an armor knight mook. Generic thief. Pretty fast at 36 AS, 40 Atk isn't too awful, but most people should have a shot at surviving a round, which basically makes them non-factors in terms of maddening. (Unless you threaten ORKOs with like 8 movement or something you're pretty much a non-factor.) 'Boss' mook, a little faster and a little stronger than generic thieves, but not by much. 25 Atk, 32 AS... yeah... Seems like class plays the biggest factor in how much stats you have as a unit, so people who aren't in level 20 or level 30 classes are pretty much jokes. 18 Atk... (28 AS is pretty fast, though, but it doesn't matter). 43 Atk, 29 AS, not bad, but I guess I mis-remembered how threatening these guys are. They were a bit dangerous in part 1 but at this point most people should be able to survive a round, so they're non-factors. Warriors, 57 Atk is 2HKO on most people, and 27 AS has a decent shot at doubling. This is the only Warrior on the map, though, so he doesn't really matter. Running a short team that maximizes exp gain (since Dorothea and Linhardt can both use their free unit-turns to farm exp). Alois has the exp gem, Leonie and Bernadetta Knowledge Gems. Alois is attached to Dorothea, Bernadetta to Linhardt, and Leonie to Byleth. Replenishing Battalions. The Map, tl;dr version: Byleth kills the mage first thing and then gets danced, ending turn over here. Leonie gets a good level from enemy phase exp. And the map ends up looking like this by the start of turn 2. Some exp grinding later and Bernadetta gets A rank Bows and Encloser. Encloser is a lot better in Sniper or Bow Knight, since it lets her immobilize people without having to tank a counter, but if you feed her Fortress Knight bases (which, admittedly, I didn't), tanking counters isn't too much of a problem. Some dance exp later and Dorothea gets this weird level. Speed is always nice, though, and she's almost at a multiple of 5 for Strength. More exp grinding and Byleth hits A+ flying, meaning she's completely indestructible now. (I think she maxes out at like 150 avoid or something, before terrain.) And Leonie gets A lances. Unless you're slower than molasses Lance Jab is pretty much a straight upgrade to Tempest Lance. (Falcon Knight or Wyvern Lord bases are enough to make Lance Jab out damage Tempest Lance, and Leonie is a lot faster than that.) Also got a minimum roll for Wootz Steel, but eh. Linhardt gets a great level to hit 30 with. And some mop up later and we get 6,000g for our trouble. And five Wootz Steel. It takes 2 Wootz to repair a regular Brave Weapon, so we should have more than enough to last for the rest of the game. And we get a bit of Renown. Academy: Spoiler Lectures: Getting Edelgard B Axes so she can finally swing brave axes around. Caspar needs C Lances for Wyvern Lord. Which he gets. (And he'll never touch lances ever, incidentally.) Rest of his exp goes into flying. Bernadetta needs C Swords for Falcon Knight. Although D+, which we get here, is enough for Swords not to drag down the pass chance too much. Sword exp for Leonie, same reason as Bernadetta. Alois needs C Lances just like Caspar. He gets E+ here. I also swap him to Lances and Flying since Authority isn't as big as an issue as getting into Wyvern Lord. Trying to get A Reason for Dorothea, so that she can provide long range support bonuses. (Our team is Black Eagle heavy, so Meteor is similar to a global 7% extra hit and avoid on player phase, which is pretty amazing.) A lot of people had 50 Motivation, so I ended up getting Ferdinand some more Riding exp. He has Reposition and will probably get Death Blow before I swap him into Paladin, so he's actually only a map or two of adjunct duty away from being one of my better units, even on the main team. He's been benched for a while, but both his Strength and Speed are quite good despite him being level 19. Oh and I swap Sky Watch duty to Caspar and Shamir. Alois gets a free support refill after I'm done tutoring people. Felix's birthday. Perfect, but no Charm. Caspar and Shamir gets Perfect for Sky Watch, so we get like 800g extra of stuff. End of week exp gives Edelgard Lance Breaker and B Axes. Not much else happened. Not going to show the rest of the screenshots for supports anymore, just assume they're steadily climbing to max support levels. Edelgard and Dorothea is a pretty great support since it'll help Edelgard's accuracy issues once Dorothea gets Meteor. Edelgard tries for Falcon Knight, pretty likely thanks to its low requirements. Wyvern Lord has arguably better stats, but it tends to take a bit longer to get into (especially if you're male and can't start grinding Flying exp from level 10), so I don't use it much. In this particular case I'm favoring Falcon Knight because Edelgard has some accuracy issues, since she can try for either one. Falcon Knight has 3 more Dex than Wyvern Lord. The scary thing about Falcon Knight bases is that Edelgard is only 3 Speed higher than its bases, and she's pretty fast. (Same goes for Wyvern Lord.) Growths basically don't matter in this game since you get so much stats from class bases, class stat boosts, and skills. Hubert tests for Dark Bishop again, and passes this time. Edelgard ate our last Master Seal, so I buy another one from the shop. (Only 1 at a time since this shop has a limited supply but Anna's doesn't.) I also sell some Umbral Steel for cash, leaving us with 21. I have no idea why the game hands us so much damn Umbral Steel. Linhardt ties for Holy Knight, fails. So I have him test for Soldier to advance the RNG counter. Caspar tries for Wyvern Lord, fails. So he gets Myrmidon for the RNG counter. Buying a pair of Beginner Seals for RNG counter needs. Leonie tries for Falcon Knight, but she fails as well despite the good odds. So she tests into Fighter for RNG. Exploration: Need to refill motivation + pick up some master seals from Anna's shop. Non-quest stuff: No Speed Carrot, but Byleth is literally untouchable by non-gambit attacks and I don't care enough to give stat boosters to anyone else, so it doesn't matter too much. Doesn't mean I'm not going to go for more Speed Carrots, though. Doop. We run to Anna's to buy 5 Master Seals, which should be enough for the time being. The shop for the advanced forging materials and seeds haven't opened yet, so I'm guessing it opens the month after you do Anna's quest. We buy some Black-Sand Steel for forging killer weapons. Motivation refills incoming. Doop. And doop. Lance exp training. (Offscreen, Byleth handed her a lost item for Motivation refill.) More Lance exp training. Sword-breaker isn't too much of an issue now that we have Alert Stance+, but Falcon Knight means Lances hit a bit harder than swords for Byleth, so higher Prowess is still nice. Sword exp because why not. Sword Crit +20 isn't too bad for mowing down mooks. I enter Jeritza into the bow tournament without swapping his class. He gets to the finals before getting OHKOd by a crit. (Without crits he'd win.) So I reload the save, swap him to Death Knight, and do 4 tournaments to finish off the day. (And swapping him back to Wyvern.) Caspar gets a support level from Byleth eating with him, wasting a motivation refill. But eh. Lysithea's birthday, tea party, perfect. No Charm. : ( Fails. Succeeds. Note how despite how lucky Caspar had been with Speed levels he's still only 1 Speed higher than Wyvern Lord bases. And 10 Speed in 20 levels---from Thief bases---is 50% Speed growths. Wyvern & Falcon bases are obscene. Too bad Speed doesn't matter as a stat on Maddening. (You either have way, way more than enough thanks to chugging Speed Carrots all day or everyone and their grandmothers double your ass thanks to Maddening enemy stats.) Leonie fails. Pretty unlucky with master class tests, but we'll have a full month to try for them next month. 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DehNutCase Posted March 30, 2020 Author Share Posted March 30, 2020 Chapter 15: Protecting Garreg Mach (Story Mission) Spoiler The mooks on the map are the same level as the ones in the Paralogues, and it's actually a map with pretty high enemy density too, once the reinforcements pop in. I honestly have no idea what the 'Suggested Level' stuff is supposed to convey. Pre-Map Planning: The game doesn't show you the defended locations until the map starts, but it's the 3 tiles behind your main team which leads, presumably, deeper into the monastery. These three, to be specific. It's a defense map, so AI does the weird thing where they (seem) to ignore your units that are further from the objective than they are, but will act normally otherwise. I'm not 100% on this since I'm much too lazy to do proper AI testing for three houses, though. This means the map is basically a exp factory if you position properly, since you can have your heavily invested units deliberately let mooks through for people with exp issues to smack around. Anyway, you start in a very defensible location with good chokepoints and walls to block off your enemies, which are pretty much all grounded. There's a few fliers on the map, but 4 of them don't aggro until you get into their range, and the rest are Pegasus Knights, which are a lot less dangerous than they used to be. (Enemy Pegasus Knights still ORKO like 50% of my mooks, but that's basically harmless for a Maddening mook.) Any team with good range or mobility can just sit tight near the choke points and pick off the enemies as they approach. If the axe mook commander gets into the forest he'll presumably set it on fire, but I've honestly never took long enough on this map for that to happen. (No idea if setting the forest on fire would trigger the enemy reinforcements, either.) That said, there's a small issue in that you'll trigger reinforcements if you move a unit deep enough into the forest (two different waves, one for the left side, one for the right side), so you'll want either a Rescue, a super strong unit that can handle a hilarious amount of enemy phase combats, or high mobility + a bunch of gambits to handle the sudden flood of enemy mooks as you push out. The initial set of enemies isn't very dense, and also fairly immobile despite the presence of 3 Assassins (who are as mobile as foot-locked units get, pretty much). Watch out for the Pegasus Knight, but even base level Jeritza can handle a round of Pegasus Knight damage, so you have to be really careless for her to be a problem. You actually start deployed in pretty good locations for picking things off as they charge towards you, but do be careful about reinforcements---if you're too far forward your back-liners would get sniped. Heroes, if you're getting doubled you're probably dead. And 36 AS means you're probably getting doubled. But they're not too special despite that thanks to 5 movement and being impeded by terrain. (Lots of forests and walls on this map.) Assassins, much more dangerous than Heroes thanks to 44 AS meaning literally everyone gets doubled (Byleth doesn't, but she ate like 30 Speed worth of stat boosters so she doesn't counter), and 6 movement + lack of terrain penalty means their reach aren't too bad, either. They have fairly decent avoid, so I hope your support levels are pretty high. (Or you invested in accuracy battalions---accuracy is a lot cheaper to get via battalions than skills, stats, or weapons, so they're better than they might seem if you have accuracy issues.) Pegasus Knight. They're significantly weaker than Heroes, but their good mobility means that they're a lot more threatening. 47 Atk isn't too bad for ORKOs, anyway, although most of your physical units can probably survive a round despite being doubled. Snipers aren't too bad, although their accuracy isn't really as good as the 140 hit seems, thanks to the amount of bushes on this map + the fact that +1 Range is basically -20 hit. Doesn't help that 13 of their Hit comes from this battalion, so the ones without battalions have even bigger accuracy issues. Fortress Knights exist. (Any mage with access to tomes that don't weight 50 pounds should be able to double them to death in a single round, and if you're not into mages you can always just use Levins instead.) This is the left side reinforcements, mostly. As you can see they're actually pretty far from the objective tiles, so it's pretty safe to send a single unit out to trigger the reinforcements before using Rescue to bring them back to safety. (Or just having them kill all the reinforcements in Byleth's case.) The map after the left side reinforcements spawned, to give you an idea of the spawn locations. Here's the stats for Warlocks. 44 Atk, 29 AS isn't too bad, although your units probably have a decent shot at surviving a round at this point. Honestly I remembered enemy magical mooks having better stats, but I guess it's mostly the bosses that gave me that impression. And this is the right side reinforcements, mostly. The map after the right side reinforcements spawned. Here's the stats for the Bishop, which is pretty damn awful, although you need to watch out for Miracle if you were depending on a OHKO to avoid the counter. Interesting tidbit about the Bishop. He has Seiros Holy Monks (the Stride battalion), but as far as I know the AI never uses it. And here's Flayn. 15 AS means she shouldn't be doubling anything, ever, but 70 Atk means she has a pretty decent shot at OHKOing whoever attacks her. Not too dangerous despite that, though, since she only has 2 range. (If you didn't do her Paralogue she'd have 3 range, which is a bit more problematic, but even then you can just kill her with gambits, and 4 range attacks isn't too hard to find anyway.) Watch out for Miracle, though. Her battalion is pretty damn good, stat wise (145 accuracy means she actually has decent hit rates against Byleth), but it has the AoE healing gambit, so you don't need to worry about a random OHKO from gambit damage. As you can see the enemy density in the middle of the map is actually pretty high, but they all spawn far enough away from your initial locations that it's not too much of an issue to just pick them off one by one as they approach your team, assuming you have a way to make sure the person who spawned all the reinforcements are safe. (You are allowed to Canto away after triggering reinforcements, so someone with good attack range or a caster on a horse should be pretty safe as long as you're willing to spend a Divine Pulse or two figuring out the spawn box for the enemy reinforcements.) Here's the bottom right of the map. The Axe commander is supposed to be Alois, I believe. This axe mook has the Knights of Seiros equipped, so presumably he's the guy that sets the forest on fire. (Since 'Blaze' is the gambit.) Pretty good stats, although 28 AS is low enough that you should be able to find a few units that don't get doubled. (If you're doubled you're probably dead, though.) This is, presumably, Alois. Who... isn't threatening at all. He has 12 AS. Wasn't Hilda walking around with like 14 more damage and 20 more AS on top of better accuracy? Smack him around for the Axe of Zoltan, which, ironically enough, probably only Alois will be able to equip, thanks to the A rank requirement. Bottom left of the map. Bunch of Fortress Knights and a female Sniper (presumably Shamir). I'm... not sure why Shamir and Alois have god awful stats? Do the enemy mooks have better stats if you don't recruit them? 15 AS and 49 Atk is stuff we could've handled 10 or 20 levels ago. And to cap it off she even has 5 range, so she basically has 81 Hit. On a map with tons of forests. Battalion isn't anything to write home about, either. And a bit below Shamir's group we have Seteth and a bunch of Wyvern Riders. The Wyvern Riders are pretty dangerous, 33 AS means they double the majority of your team, and 57 Atk means they probably 2HKO the majority. The middle one even has Cichol Wyvern Co. to be even more threatening. Seteth is built like a brick, 44 Prt means it's hard to hurt him with physical damage, his shield negates crits, and he nullifies Flying effectiveness. He's not immune to debuffs, though, so gambits or other immobilizing effects means you can take your time chipping him down if needed. If you didn't do his Paralogue he'd have the semi-relic lance here, but it doesn't matter too much either way. (The level 5 faith is pretty nice flavor, incidentally.) 67 Atk and 34 AS isn't too much threatening than his Wyvern Rider buddies, though. (I mean, they'll still murder like 80% of your team, but that's 20% that can actually take him.) He also has Cichol Wyvern Co., although at level 5 rather than 4. Not much to say about this map, the enemy mooks pretty much either rush in to die trying to run through choke points, or else sit there and wait for you to kill them. Team is like this. Ferdinand is attached to Dorothea, Hubert to Linhardt, and Alois to Byleth. Alois has the exp gem, the other two Knowledge Gems. I ended up swapping some swords out of Byleth's inventory for a pair of Lances, although in retrospect the Rapier is her go-to weapon regardless. We repair the rapier to full durability, obviously. Too bad lords don't start with a Rapier for free in Three Houses, because that would be amazingly dope. (I wouldn't even mind if only the House Leaders & maybe Byleth could wield them, either.) Edelgard doesn't actually pick up a Brave Axe since the Brave Lance does more damage + Caspar is better off holding the one we have. She does grab a Short Spear for occasional poking at people, though. Leonie picks up Steel Bow+ since it's actually pretty dangerous to try to melee people. Also a crit ring since she doesn't have accuracy issues and I don't really care enough to give her a shield. Accuracy ring goes back to Bernadetta. Caspar gets a bunch of axes and the Aurora Shield. Aegis might be better for him, but his Speed is a bit iffy as is, so I'd rather not weigh him don even more. Caspar swaps out Authority and Lancebreaker for Seal Defense and Alert Stance. Bernadetta swaps out Triangle Attack for Encloser (2 range only, +15 Hit, 4 MT, prevents movement after landing a hit). Triangle attack is just too difficult to use when everyone dies in a single round to everything, meaning it's pretty risky to leave your units right next to an enemy. Leonie swaps out Monster Piercer for Lance Jab. (I tend to prefer using gambits or regular attacks to smack monsters around anyway, and Lance Jab does more than Monster Piercer vs. non-Monsters.) Caspar gets the OG Seiros Pegasus Co. The fact that those stats are on a D rank battalion is pretty ridiculous, honestly. The Map: Would've been nice if you told us where the protected locations were before we started the map, game. The Pegasus Knight is the only threat range that matters at the start of turn 1, but as you can see she's not too much of a threat. (If Caspar had kept Lancebreaker he can actually reach around 36% hit rates from her thanks to that + Alert Stance.) Fishing for crits, which happens, and the Assassin goes to 1 hp. She Cantos left afterwards, to join the main team. The nice thing about breakable walls is that Bernadetta doesn't have to risk anything to trigger her Personal. Doop. Giving Byleth Counterattack. Byleth flies over here to trigger Alert Stance+, and Dorothea dances her. Byleth does Byleth things. Seteth shouts. And a bunch more mooks pop out in the middle of Byleth murdering this poor mook. (Because of that, you can just Canto out of the way of the newly spawned mooks, making triggering the reinforcements safely as lot less dangerous than it might've been.) But dangerous is Byleth's middle name or something, so she ends turn here, in range of most of the mooks that spawned + the female Sniper with 5 range. Not much for anybody else to do, so everyone moves a bit out of enemy range and the turn ends like this for them. End of turn 1. This guy survives, amazingly enough, thanks to Byleth not managing a single critical or Crest proc. Gonna skip the rest of the mooks suiciding into her sword, though. Alois gets a pretty okay level during the enemy phase. Because Caspar has Death Blow and Alois doesn't, Alois is actually quite a bit worse than Caspar, so I don't see him making the team unless someone gets amazingly stat screwed. On the plus side he's pretty good adjunct fodder for Leonie. Alois gets C+ flying. This lands, incidentally. Group Flames has 10% more accuracy than most gambits, and between that and the axe mook who managed to survive Byleth the 40% accuracy means it's pretty decent odds to land. These are the last two combats of the enemy phase, though, and Byleth was fine even if they both landed. Hubert mentions they're trying to set the forest on fire. But doesn't tell us which unit, specifically, is going to do that... (I'm assuming it's either no-Alois or the axe mook next to not-Alois, but how are you supposed to know that until after you killed them or they set the forest on fire?) Byleth is stuck thanks to the gambit, so she just sits there and Waits to trigger Alert Stance+. Top-side we have a bunch of mooks flooding in, so we start working on them. This attack doesn't crit, sadly. Poke. (No crit either.) Dance. And poke. Heroes are fast enough that even Darting Blow & Dance buff isn't enough for Shamir to double them, which is pretty annoying. This doesn't crit either. Doop. Good thing Assassins don't have Axebreaker, or else this combat would've been real shaky. (Thanks to the two roll system this is almost 95% accuracy right now.) Doop. And doop. Linhardt things. I move people around a bit, leaving Jertiza in range of a single Assassin. (Which he can handle without problems.) End of turn 2. I should probably forge some Iron+ weapons, seeing all of these accuracy issues... Axe mook attacks Byleth again, and so does the Warlock. (Both die.) And Alois gets a pretty sad level. (The Speed is pointless since his base speed is actually 19 right now, meaning even if he got another point at level 30 that just puts him at 20 Speed, which is what Wyvern Lord would give him anyway.) Sniper uses his final Fusillade, and misses this time. Start of turn Byleth stabs the Sniper to death. (With moderately shaky odds.) And heads back to the main team. Doop. And she gets a more or less perfect level from the kill. Doop. Poke. (The crit lands.) Poke. In all honestly, this is probably comparable to a Strength only level. (Leonie has enough Dex that accuracy isn't an issue, and her Speed isn't high enough to use stronger weapons without missing doubles on the faster enemy mooks.) Not going to complain about it, though. Dance for Bernadetta. And dead. Some moving around and also Linhardt things. Turn 3 ends like this. Stride for Byleth. She flies over here and gets danced. Warping Byleth. Which gets Hubert a pretty good level, although he's slow enough that he won't even be able to double armors if/when he makes the main team. (It doesn't really change his utility that much, though---armors aren't a high priority target and you need to be extremely Speed blessed to be able to double anything else on Maddening.) Byleth does Byleth things. (Although the KO isn't guaranteed.) Flayn pops out of some bushes. (I can't help but think that trying to set the bushes you're hiding in on fire is a really bad plan.) Not-Alois explodes to a crit. We convoy the Axe of Zoltan. Like the Bow of Zoltan, it's pretty much a Silver+ with higher skill rank requirements. (Yeah, it's effective vs. armors, but it's heavy enough that you won't be able to double them while wielding it unless you're Byleth, and armors have enough hp that a OHKO isn't feasible.) Edelgard said this after not-Alois died, so I'm guessing he was the one who was supposed to set things on fire. Byleth flies over here after the combat, since I didn't want her getting dogpiled by a bunch of gambits + Flayn. Rest of the team moves a bit downwards. End of turn 4. Going to skip the pictures of the rest of the mooks suiciding into Byleth. (This guy survives, by the way.) Byleth gets a more or less perfect level (Str & Speed) from smacking a Pegasus Knight around. Alois masters Wyvern Rider in the same combat. Honestly this is probably a better level than getting every stat except Strength. Byleth does a hit and run at the start of turn. Flying over here after murdering the Axe mook with a crit. An Assassin walked over here, so Annette starts smacking it. A dance. And dead. For a pretty great level. (Not perfect since it's missing Luck, but it's still amazing.) Not much to do so Lysithea farms some skill exp by breaking a wall. Ditto for Linhardt. We move around a little, and Jeritza ends turn in range to bait an armor. He's holding an Killer Lance right now, but in retrospect an Axe would've been better. End of turn 5. Boring Jertiza combat. Enemy phase Byleth things. There was only one other combat, so I'll include it. This guy somehow survives, by the way. (He had significantly better odds to survive than the 2% or so chance to dodge one of Byleth's swings, thanks to Miracle, but he actually didn't need Miracle, since Byleth did miss a swing.) But Byleth mops him up on player phase. (This mook is made of luck, not that being lucky helps against Byleth.) Byleth flies over here after the combat. Some moving around and a dance for exp farming. That's Death Blow mastered for Ferdinand, so once he hits level 20 he's instantly making the team. Annette farms an armor for exp. Jeritza moves over here, and with a training axe this time. (Thanks to Axefaire the training axe does more damage than the killer lance.) Exp farming. Some fliers go back towards the objective tiles in case the AI does something funky and Byleth needs help. End of turn 6. Hero attacks Byleth, for predictable results. This armor has a battalion, hence why training axe looks like it's worse than Killer Lance. The Assassin tries a spooky blaze, which misses. Start of turn Annette starts mowing down the armors. (She doesn't get many chances to farm exp, so I'm taking advantage of the map to get her closer to level 30.) Dance. And another dead armor mook. A poke from Lysithea. And Bernadetta grabs the kill. Speed isn't a real issue, but Bernadetta's going to like Falcon's better Strength and 10% Strength growths. (Falcon Knight has 10% Strength and 20% Speed growths, making it the best Strength + Speed growth class, tied with Swordmaster.) Byleth flies over here to steal Flayn's Elixir. ...But I forget to convoy enough stuff to steal the Magic Staff as well. (I assumed you can't steal it since you can't steal the +1 range staff if Flayn had it, but the Magic staff is perfectly fine to steal.) Can't be helped. Byleth flies over here after stealing just the Elixir. Linhardt doing more exp farming. End of turn 7. Fortunately, Flayn attacks first, so she doesn't suicide onto Byleth. (Counterattack wore off.) Flayn is body blocking the Warlock from a safe combat, so the guy suicides into Byleth. (One nice thing about making Byleth chug every stat booster rather than just Speed and Strength ones---she has enough bulk that she would've survived the Warlock and Flayn managing to land their hits, although only by 1 hp.) Anyway, start of turn Byleth convoys the Elixir and steals Flayn's Magic Staff as well. Byleth flies away and Lysithea smacks Flayn around a bit. Dance exp farming. Really strange level, but it pushes Strength to a multiple of 5 so it's kind of like getting a point of Speed. I flew Byleth over here for extra exp, before remembering Flayn has Miracle, so I ended up having Bernadetta attack from 3 range instead. No miracle proc, so Bernadetta gets the kill. Jeritza flies over to lure an Armor and Annette stands around waiting for the exp pinata. End of turn 8. There's no reinforcements left, so nothing left except a final round of mop up. Enemy phase combat. Byleth flies over here and gets danced. Giving Ferdinand a great level to hit 20 with. (His Strength isn't as good as it looks thanks to Brigand's Strength boost, and his Speed will take a slight penalty from swapping to Paladin, but there's nothing to complain about in terms of his stats, thanks to Lancefaire and Death Blow combining to give him more than 30 effective Strength.) Everything else being equal Alois would be a bit better, but we're already maxed out in terms of handing out flying battalions. Byleth swaps to Silver Sword+ and waits over here. Annette smacks another armor. Getting a not very good, but acceptable level. Her Speed is a little shaky if she wants to keep doubling armors, but Magic is still the better stat. Exp farming by Linhardt. And everyone moves a bit closer to the action. (Note Edelgard baiting the armor knight on the left side.) End of turn 9, almost done. Seteth moves first, and misses his Assault Troop. (And wow that's some serious damage.) This comes from a different enemy phase combat. Very lackluster level, but it doesn't matter too much. This guy, amazingly enough, lands his gambit. Edelgard and this Fortress Knight has a completely useless combat. (Offscreen, one of the Wyvern Riders survive a combat against Byleth.) Start of turn, Linhardt Warps Dorothea forward. Shamir kills a Wyvern. Bernadetta flies closer to the action and Annette Strides her. And a dance for Bernadetta. I'm not sure if Encloser works if you do 0 damage, but Bernadetta has enough to barely dent Seteth's crazy bulk, so it doesn't matter. And Jeritza smacks this guy for some axe exp. There's some moving around near the bottom of the map, and Lysithea breaks a wall for some skill exp. Turn 10. Almost done with the map. Annette grabs her last armor kill. Dance exp. Healing exp. Annette things. Seteth being annoyingly bulky. (15 damage after Heavy Draw and Rally Strength... and Shamir's one of the strongest units in my lineup.) Fortunately Byleth has a strong sword arm. Doop. And doop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted April 1, 2020 Share Posted April 1, 2020 On 3/30/2020 at 10:22 AM, DehNutCase said: This is the left side reinforcements, mostly. As you can see they're actually pretty far from the objective tiles, so it's pretty safe to send a single unit out to trigger the reinforcements before using Rescue to bring them back to safety. Wouldn’t that practically require DLC, seeing as only four characters get Rescue, and only one of these (Bernadetta) is usable in the base game? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted April 1, 2020 Author Share Posted April 1, 2020 2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: Wouldn’t that practically require DLC, seeing as only four characters get Rescue, and only one of these (Bernadetta) is usable in the base game? Well, I actually value Rescue higher than Warp, so sacrificing Bernadetta to turn her into a caster feels like a reasonable choice to me. Thanks to the mage line being so strong in terms of combat she can actually get away with her awful 20% Mag growth by picking up 15 base mag from Bishop (17 from Warlock if you're willing to dump a fairly significant amount of Reason exp into her), +2 Magic from Monk, and 6 Atk from Fiendish Blow, so it's not like her combat is going to suffer that much for it. Plus she even has one of the easiest times getting into mage cavalry, which would get her Tomefaire. I'll admit you'd need to know about spell lists to have Rescue at all in Crimson Flower, though... Making Bernadetta into a caster isn't exactly an obvious move. Strictly speaking you can also get away with Canto, Reposition, and Stride, but that's just Rescue with extra steps. (And it's probably more of a hassle to get that many copies of Reposition than to make Bernadetta get Rescue.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted April 2, 2020 Author Share Posted April 2, 2020 Chapter 16: 1st Academy Session Academy: Spoiler Hmm, do I get a minor but free bonus, or do I refuse? -_- This gets Byleth D+ Faith, for Reason Level 2 and Nosferatu. We had a tea party. It was Great, but no Charm. Oh and Edelgard gets Emperor. The base stats are exactly the same as Armored Lord, although you get a bit more defense and a little bit of other stats in bonus stats in exchange for losing another point of Speed. Maybe if Edelgard got magic access as Emperor it would be interesting as a class, but as is it's pretty pointless. It's pretty much just Fortress Knight with an extra point of movement. Anyway, Ferdinand tests for Paladin. And gets in, so he's ready for the main team now. His Authority is still only C rank, though, so Sylvain is still quite comparable despite the fact that Ferdinand has Reposition. (Since Sylvain can carry the other Stride battalion, but Ferdinand can't.) Linhardt tries for Holy Knight, fails. Leonie tries for Falcon Knight, also fails. So I have Linhardt test for Myrmidon and Leonie for Archer to advance the RNG counter. Exploration: Rare Monster Sighting is on the same day as Fistfuls of Fish, which is annoying. But we're long past the point where fishing matters, so eh. Anyway, we're off to do some exploring. Quest Stuff: Turns out, the final merchant is from this Quest, rather than being tied to Anna's. We need to do 3 Paralogues and this, so we'll be doing the two Rare Monster Sightings this month. Non-quest Stuff: No Speed Carrots, but Byleth has like 100 avoidance before Alert Stance, so it's not like she needs more Speed. Not planting the usual this time since we have enough for a 5x. And pegasus blessings pushes us into max yield. Cooking with Edelgard. We would cook the Best of Fodlan with the Moose from Hubert's quest, but I don't care enough about it to save the Goddess Messenger. (If next month has a Fish of Mystery day I'll try fishing for one, but I won't bother saving and reloading to guarantee it.) Exp grinding. Doop. Forgot to take the right screenshot, but this is Byleth getting Lance exp. And we end the day with 6 tournaments. This is the finals, by the way. A level 20 mook. (I really have no idea why they put the ultra-strong Swordmaster as the first tournament of Part 2 and then give us these losers for the rest.) Lecture: Getting D+ lances so that, worst comes to worst, Linhardt can test for Cavalier and I get him some extra Riding exp by having him adjunct in Cavalier. D+ lances. One downside of Falcon Knight Bernadetta is that you spend a ton of exp for Lances, which she'll pretty much never use. (She's decent with a Brave Lance, don't get me wrong, but so is, like, 60% of the team.) Riding exp. Lance exp. D Lances. Might end up getting her Cavalier for Riding exp, like Linhardt. Getting Flying exp until Leonie's less than 20 exp away from B+. And dumping the last session into Swords, meaning she has 100% for Falcon after self-study exp. Flying exp for Jeritza. Not sure he'll make it into Wyvern before the game ends. I guess I could staple him to Byleth to let mastermind grind Axe and Flying for him. And Shamir gets some more Lance exp. Flying exp isn't as important now, so I swap back to Stable Duty. Only Lysithea got anything from this, which is +25 Motivation. *Shrug* Had tea. Nice. No Charm. 1.5k worth of stuff, and some valuable Riding exp. Swift Strikes for Sylvain. (And A Lances.) Swift Strikes is +2 MT and hits twice, so it basically turns everything into a Brave Weapon. You can't follow-up with it, but Sylvain is so slow that he won't even double armors if he's holding a serious weapon, anyway. That said, we have enough Brave Weapons to go around that Ferdinand will probably have a better shot at making the team once Ferdinand gets B Authority. (Since Ferdinand would have Reposition on top of similar combat & battalion access.) Besides, Ferdinand gets Swift Strikes at A Lances as well. Aside from Sylvain, Annette got D+ Lances, Marianne D+ Authority, Leonie C Swords (and Grounder, not that she'll ever use swords), and B+ Flying, Manuela C Riding, and Alois D Lances. 50% for Holy Knight now, but it failed. He manages to get into Cavalier, though. Falcon Knight for Leonie. Which gives her a decent boost to Resistance. She's still pretty squishy against magic damage, but she should be able to barely survive rather than barely not survive, now, especially considering Falcon Knight's 2 extra Resistance compared to Pegasus Knight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted April 4, 2020 Share Posted April 4, 2020 On 4/1/2020 at 2:33 PM, DehNutCase said: Well, I actually value Rescue higher than Warp, so sacrificing Bernadetta to turn her into a caster feels like a reasonable choice to me. Thanks to the mage line being so strong in terms of combat she can actually get away with her awful 20% Mag growth by picking up 15 base mag from Bishop (17 from Warlock if you're willing to dump a fairly significant amount of Reason exp into her), +2 Magic from Monk, and 6 Atk from Fiendish Blow, so it's not like her combat is going to suffer that much for it. Plus she even has one of the easiest times getting into mage cavalry, which would get her Tomefaire. I'll admit you'd need to know about spell lists to have Rescue at all in Crimson Flower, though... Making Bernadetta into a caster isn't exactly an obvious move. Strictly speaking you can also get away with Canto, Reposition, and Stride, but that's just Rescue with extra steps. (And it's probably more of a hassle to get that many copies of Reposition than to make Bernadetta get Rescue.) Problem is, we're talking about a spell with a range of Mag/4. That means I can't expect her to have much range with it. Also, this means giving up Encloser, which I would honestly consider a hard sell (especially since if i'm making someone put in a lot of Faith training, they need a lot of Reason training as well, because having your only attack spell be the 8 weight/1 might Nosferatu is not a fun time). Or have the DLC, as Constance and Anna both have Rescue in their spell lists. Also, they only need B Faith, as opposed to Bernie needing A, and will have more range than she does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted April 5, 2020 Author Share Posted April 5, 2020 22 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: Problem is, we're talking about a spell with a range of Mag/4. That means I can't expect her to have much range with it. Also, this means giving up Encloser, which I would honestly consider a hard sell (especially since if i'm making someone put in a lot of Faith training, they need a lot of Reason training as well, because having your only attack spell be the 8 weight/1 might Nosferatu is not a fun time). Or have the DLC, as Constance and Anna both have Rescue in their spell lists. Also, they only need B Faith, as opposed to Bernie needing A, and will have more range than she does. C Reason already picks up most of Bernadetta's black magic spells, mind, and if you're going to spend time in Mage (to pick up Fiendish Blow), you'll have at least D+. I'll agree that ideally you'll want to dump a lot of Reason exp into her, since A Reason gives her both Warlock bases (17 Mag, plus 2 from Monk's Magic +2 skill puts you at 19, which is only 1 away from a 5 range Rescue) and her final spell, but Bernadetta doesn't actually need a lot of Reason exp to function as an offensive caster. A 4 range Rescue isn't too great, since the Rescue'd unit lands on the square closest to where they had been before (so it's more like a spell that moves something 3 squares, which isn't much better than a 2 square Reposition), but at 5 range it'll move people 4 squares, which is two Repositions worth, and 20 Magic is pretty achievable even without any Magic levels thanks to class stat boosts. Anna won't actually have a lot more range than Bernadetta, the marginal magic growth difference between them is only 15%, you'd need 4/.15 or about 26 levels after both of them hit level 20 (for Warlock bases) for Anna to get one more range on Rescue than Bernadetta---for practical purposes they're pretty much identical as casters. If both of them gets Warlock at the same time then the difference would actually show up sooner (since even if they end up with the same Range Anna would get to her maximum range earlier), but Anna has a Weakness in Reason in exchange for her Strength in Faith, so it's mostly a matter of whether getting Rescue a lot faster is worth having worse access to offensive spells and slower access to Warlock bases if you needed to spend skill exp in other things. Constance is significantly better in terms of raw magic than either of them, so for him it depends on how much you value Speed and having hidden talents in Riding vs. Magic and a strength in Reason. Regarding Encloser, well, that's kind of the problem with one unit having a lot of hard to get things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DehNutCase Posted June 14, 2020 Author Share Posted June 14, 2020 Chapter 16: Forgotten Hero (Marianne's Paralogue) Map: Spoiler Suggested Level: 33 Not that suggested level matters much at this point. Either your units are completely indestructible thanks to Alert Stance+ by now, or they... aren't. Pre-map Planning: Got to love map previews that are completely useless, eh? (I hate fog of war maps so much.) Boss stats. Nothing special aside from the fact that he's strong enough to OHKO Marianne, and also fast enough to double her. You technically won't get to know this until you start the map, but who care. 43 Atk, 31 AS is pretty scary for backliners, but most of your physical units should be able to survive one round. (Mostly because any physical unit that dies to 41/31 is probably going to be benched immediately.) 44 Atk and 20 AS should be low enough that just about everyone can survive a round with this guy. (Marianne... can't.) There's some non monster mooks mixed inside the map, but they're mostly Dark Bishops---with a threat range of 7 (death has 1-3 range) you should see them with a recently lit torch before they can hit you, but it's best to assume they can smack you out of fog. There's some healers on the map too, they shouldn't be too much of an issue, although despite appearances they do have an attack spell, so don't just assume they're harmless. Also some Snipers. Just like with the Dark Bishops, assume they can smack you from fog. There's also a monster with a Giant Shell in the top left corner of the map, because obviously you'd know that in a fog of war map. (I guess it's better than desert maps in terms of hiding loot?) This is what you would see if you have Marianne use a torch immediately when the map starts. The three monsters close to the boss start unaggro'd and don't move until you aggro the boss or get into their attack range, so they aren't too big of an issue. The monster at the top of the map has 4 movement and 2 range, so it's exactly 1 tile too far to hit Marianne. (I forgot about that monster later, and Marianne gets eaten because of it, but at least it's only a Divine Pulse rather than a full reset.) One saving grace is that the Torch actually reveals every monster that's in range to attack Marianne, even if everything's aggro'd. (There's a wolf that's barely in range and would have been able to hit Marianne, but a rock's blocking it from using the shortest route.) As fog of war maps go, this one only has one wave of reinforcements (when you aggro the boss), and Monsters only barely have more range than Torch + regular vision, so it's... not awful. You know, by the standards of fog of war maps. Which are all utter garbage. You still get things popping out of fog to instantly ORKO your squishier mooks, but thanks to the fact that there's only one wave of reinforcements it's actually pretty easy to keep your backliners safe. The trick is to have your 'Byleth'---whoever's completely indestructible in combat---hold a torch and advance in a certain direction every turn, the backliners can then move forward a few squares and be certain of being safe. The wolves have 6 movement and 2 range, which is barely enough to ambush you out of fog despite torches, but it's not enough to ambush you if you have torches and walk away from them a few squares a turn. (You know the front is safe since your Byleth would have scouted it, and you know that even if the back is a bit dangerous you can still calculate safe squares by assuming every fog tile has a wolf hiding inside.) The main issue with that strategy is that you do need to have a Byleth, someone who can take arbitrary amounts of enemy combats and still stay alive. Which takes heavy investment. Fog of war maps are probably the biggest reason I stuff Byleth with metric tons of stat boosters rather than just leaving them in convoy like I usually do---you can't rely on mobility and positioning to overcome stat differences so your options are pretty much to either: A, Ignore the fog of war by either reading a guide or scouting the map beforehand and resetting to know where enemies are, and then use meticulous AI prediction to know exactly what each enemy is doing in the fog despite the fact you can't see them. (This is actually do-able, mind, just extremely tedious and annoying---You occasionally need to do similar stuff with AI manipulation in Aether Raids in FEH, which requires a deep understanding of AI movement. The fact that I had to do that crap daily for a casual mobile game is pretty much why I stopped playing FEH.) B, Make sure the stat difference is in your favor. (That is, make a Byleth.) Anyway, while we're using option B we do still need to buy massive amounts of torches to keep our backliner's safe. (Since we need to have torches on Byleth and Torches on whoever's near the back so we know how much we have to walk forward to be absolutely safe.) Bernadetta's hard to use in a fog of war map (since it's hard to give her 'safe' combats to trigger her Personal), so she's out of the lineup for the time being. Caspar's stapled to Byleth with the exp gem, Bernadetta to Linhardt, and Ferdinand to Dorothea. Bernadetta and Ferdinand have Knowledge Gems. Ferdinand's benched so it doesn't really matter, but he swaps out Defense +2 for Death Blow. Replenishing Battalions. Marianne gets a basic magic Battalion. Group Flames's small AoE and single use is a downer, but its 60 hit means that it's pretty accurate even on low Charm units. We buy a torch for Marianne. And 9 more for the convoy. That's 6k on torches. (Playing Fog of War maps is both annoying and pricey.) We hand out torches to the mages since they have inventory slots to spare. Doop. Doop. Leonie's kit, she picked up a Blessed Lance, I believe. Repairing Byleth's Rapier. And her inventory ends up like this. (She gets a leftover torch with only 1 use since she can pickup more from convoy.) Jeritza also gets a torch in exchange for his killer lance, since he can reasonably expect to survive more than 1 combat. (Meaning he can scout ahead, although not as much as Byleth.) Dorothea ends up with 2 torches since I wanted her to act as a second torch dispenser in case Byleth is too far forward for people to use Convoy. Upgrading Shamir's Killer Bow. Doop. Edelgard picks up the Silver Axe+ we won in place of her Steel Axe+. The Map: I'd personally prefer a Rout condition here, since that would make it easier to grab all the loot on the map. As is you have to be a bit careful on the map since some of the best loot (Wootz Steel) spawn after the boss is aggro'd---the reinforcement wave has Wolves. Marianne uses a Torch first so we can see what horrible monsters are trying to eat her. After that I tried moving Linhardt forward so he can use a Torch, but he bumped into a monster instead. So Annette uses a Torch instead. Seems like the main issue is left, since the Torch didn't reveal anything that's aggro'd above us. (The wolf above the monster Linhardt bumped into is stuck in place just like the wolves next to Marianne.) This guy's weak to axes, so Edelgard starts things off. We Canto over here. Gambit to break barrier. And Jeritza finishes an hp bar. We don't want to fly Byleth so far forward that Dorothea can't Dance her after using a torch, so she uses one here. Dance. We see the Dark Bishop here because of Edelgard, so Byleth takes care of him before he gets an attack off. His counter lands, thanks to magic using a different accuracy formula than physical attacks, but Byleth has pretty high Resistance so it doesn't matter. Speed and Dex aren't bad stats, but I think I'd rather have a single point of Strength instead. The Bishop had an Antitoxin. (Interesting that they hand out a lot of these, considering how many people have Restore.) Thanks to Byleth's Torch we see that only the monster that we have surrounded is in range to hit our backliners. (If the monster to our left was a Wolf it'd be different, but it's a Demonic Beast with only 4 movement.) So we take it easy and break this guy's last barrier. I should really go pick up Seraphim for Lysithea, someday. This is basically just vendor trash at this point, since I almost never use Relics. Leonie lands a crit, so this guy's down to its last hp bar. Canto. End of turn 1. There's a slight risk of a wolf popping out from the fog to the middle right of the map and KOing one of our mages if we only use the information we see, but fortunately that doesn't happen. That sure was an enemy phase combat. Byleth has the Demonic beast to the left covered, and the one we've got surrounded isn't going to be an issue soon, so Jeritza starts working on the wolves blocking Marianne from the main team by Luring it closer to us. Canto. Grinding down this guy's last hp bar. Both shots crit. Leonie Canto'd left and down, and Shamir finishes this guy off. For a almost perfect level. Doop. And doop. A great 3x drop. Considering how many wolves are on this map, we should be set for Wootz Steel for the rest of the game after this. Edelgard Canto'd leftward, and Annette finishes off an hp bar. This guy's charging up an AoE, so as long as Byleth stays close to him he won't move. She Cantos up a little, and we see a Bishop. Linhardt things. Dance for Jeritza. And he kills this wolf. Speed matters more for Jeritza than Caspar, since he has actual Speed to try and double things, but I'd still rather than Strength. Jeritza Cantos next to this guy, and Marianne Physics Byleth to full. End of turn 2. Enemy Phase combat. Heal from the Bishop we see. Heal from a Bishop we don't see. Start of player phase Byleth kills the Bishop we see. The post-combat fog change reveals a monster above Byleth, but nothing else. So I have her Canto down to reveal the bottom left corner. Which is empty, so we're safe to move everyone towards bottom left. Linhardt lights a Torch. And we start working on this guy. Doop. Doop. And doop. One hp bar gone, although the barrier isn't completely broken yet. (Not sure why I didn't just monster breaker here.) Red tile is the other monster's threat range, so most spots are pretty safe. Edelgard gives Byleth Retribution so she actually hurts people on enemy phase. (Every mook on the map can attack from range.) Canto. Annette walks here to borrow Linhardt's +range staff. Doop. That's the barrier down, and a piece of vendor trash obtained. Fishing for crits, but unfortunately neither attack crit. Canto. End of turn 3. Enemy Phase combat, and we see the rare non-zero hit chance from the demonic beast. Bishop we can't see healing. On player phase, Byleth flies just above the monster which attacked her, swaps to Killer Lance, and takes a Torch out of convoy. And we use the Torch. Which spots the Bishop, who has the Hexlock Shield. Jeritza tries to Lure another wolf, but I didn't realize Linhardt was blocking it. Alert Stance. It's not as important for Jeritza since we already have Byleth to handle enemy phase, but it's still nice. Canto. Poke. And another hp bar down. One of the attacks crit, so this guy's at critical. Dance for Annette, to feed her exp. Doop. Linhardt things. The monster's charging an AoE, so it's barrier will refresh next turn, hence why I don't bother attacking with Shamir. Leonie flies over here to grab a Torch from Dorothea, trading away her Silver Lance+. We want her covering the area behind us, hence the Torch. End of turn 4. Enemy tries to hit Byleth, with predictable results. Bishop still healing. Jeritza aggro'd this guy from his Lure attempt, which is nice, seeing how the wolf does have ORKOs on some of our guys. Start of player phase we try to kill this Bishop. Unfortunately, Miracle proc'd, so we Canto a little downward. Debuffing the wolf's Speed. Damage & breaking a barrier. 1x Wootz is still Wootz, I'll take it. Exp farming. it has Magic, so it's a good level. (Speed only matters for doubling armors, but it's nice to have, I guess.) Fishing for a crit. No dice, but at least it means we can feed Annette more exp. Doop. Breaking barriers. It's too bad effective damage doesn't force aggro, meaning you have to use a gambit to do that. But fortunately wild demonic beasts are pretty harmless, so we don't really need to force aggro anyway. Doop. B Flying for Shamir, getting her Alert Stance. It's good, but she shouldn't use it much, seeing how she's mostly a player phase unit despite her mostly enemy phase Personal. Linhardt things. Annette gets healed to full. End of turn 4. Assuming no enemy movement the bottom of the map is pretty much cleared out. We could start moving Marianne towards the main team now, but I didn't just in case stuff popped up on the bottom of the map. Unfortunately what happened was that the enemies top aggro'd towards us, so she really needed to walk towards bottom. And this happens as the second enemy phase combat. (First one involved Edelgard.) Yeah... We know that below Marianne is probably safe, so we can just move her down. Divine Pulse: 19 So she moves down here to heal instead of staying in place. End of turn 5. Enemy Phase combat. Bishop healing. Dark Bishop suiciding. Ditto for this Sniper. Marianne's next to the main team now, so I move her a bit more to the left and use a Torch. Byleth swaps back to Rapier and starts working on this guy's barriers. Canto. Taking a look at the map after Byleth moved shows that topside is mostly empty. The monster we see is the Giant Shell monster, though. We finally kill this Bishop. Getting us a vendor trash shield. Doop. Doop. Dance. And Annette gets an exp bar of exp. Venomstone is what you use to make Venin weapons. Yeah it's complete vendor trash. Linhardt gets back his staff that Annette borrowed earlier. And uses the extra range to poke at the monster. Which gets Bernadetta B+ Flying. Poke. Canto to our right in case things are approaching from that side. Leonie sees that the right side is basically clear, so we're free to keep smacking on this guy. Doop. This crits, so the guy ends up with a bit below 50 hp. End of turn 6. Leonie sees the right side as clear, the bottom monster is stunned, and the middle monster aggro'd to Byleth. Enemy Phase combat. Ditto. And another one. All three are now charging AoEs, so we don't have to worry about them unless we need to move Byleth for some reason. Doop. Exp farming. Recover's biggest problem is that it's not Physic. It's better at farming exp than Heal, I guess. Exp farming. I've honestly never had accuracy issues once part 2 rolled around, mostly because there's 2 types of combats: 1, Byleth murders everyone by himself. 2, My main army is death balling somewhere, meaning there's like triple A & B rank supports everywhere for accuracy. So yeah, pretty much an empty level. Weak to axes, hence Jeritza swinging around a Training Axe. Next time around I'll avoid buying so many training weapons for the first few maps, I think, most of them end up unused. I'm... not 100% sure why I'm using a brave bow here? This guy isn't dangerous enough for me to need to kill him quickly. She Cantos down a square after the fight. Doop. Loot. Edelgard flies over here since she doesn't have the mobility to reach the monster. Dancer things. Exp farming for a unit that I'm probably never using again after this map. (Nothing wrong with Marianne if you needed a healer, but we're fine on healers already.) Doop. For a pretty much perfect level, nobody uses Def and Res to tank anyway. Canto. I pull up the map and it shows that Leonie's Torch ran out. We don't need her to cover our backs anymore so I move her closer to the main team, and that's the end of turn 7. Enemy phase starts and ends with a pair of whiffed AoEs. Byleth flies over here and uses a Torch, so we know if there's anything else up top. It's empty. Most people (other than Marianne) can survive a round with these guys, so we're not really in a rush to kill these guys. A crit explodes the monster, and Jertiza picks up B Axes. And Lancebreaker. I guess if I really needed him to tank laces I can give him Lancebreaker and Alert Stance. Not much point using Lancebreaker and Swordbreaker at the same time, though, if you want those & prowess & alert stance that's all of his skill slots filled, which loses him stuff like Darting Blow. Edelgard hides in some bushes to lure a Monster. She's holding a short spear. This bush is only in range of one monster, so Shamir hides inside with an Iron Bow. Dance to buff Shamir's stats. Everyone moves up. End of turn 8. Byleth's Counterattack wore off, so the monster ended up attacking her rather than Edelgard. And Shamir trades some hits with this guy. At the start of turn 9 Byleth flies over here and reveals a bunch of monsters and a single Sniper. The Sniper has a Anti-toxin, not that it really matters. Leonie uses a Torch up here so we can see what we're doing. We don't really need to save our Gambits---it's an easy map, so Linhardt uses his to break some barriers. Doop. Doop. And doop. We're using the Spear of Assal pretty freely, but we don't really need Mythril for much else since I can't be assed to find Gradivus. And Lysithea breaks this guy's last barrier. Doop. Dance. It has Mag, although Dorothea doesn't attack much, so she could really just get 0 stat levels and I won't care too much. (Hp and Speed are nice for her to be able to survive one round, but if she's in range to get attacked then our other backliners are probably about to die anyway.) I guess Charm would be a nice stat to have for the occasional gambit uses, although 33 is high enough that gambit accuracy shouldn't be an issue, even unassisted. Barrier breaking. Doop. Another Umbral Steel for the pile. Topping up Edelgard. End of turn 9. Assuming nothing moved since the start of map, we know that the map is pretty much cleared except the area to the right of the boss. Start of enemy phase, Marianne comments that we see a wolf. But we've already killed a bunch? *shrug* Anyway, there's a wolf over here so we'll want to lure it towards the main team, since Byleth has issues trying to break all the barriers alone. This wasn't a combat, probably just some wolves heading towards the main team. (Most likely they got aggro'd due to the cascading aggro thing & Byleth wasn't in range.) Doop. And doop. Start of player phase, Byleth kills the Sniper. We convoy the Antitoxin. And we Canto down and to the right, to see if there's anything else over here. Not really. Mind that there's actually 4 monsters over to the right side, one of them is simply too far away for Byleth to see, now. Another Torch from Marianne so we get a better idea of what we're doing. The boss is the closest monster to the main team, but we do see another monster that Byleth's Torch couldn't quite reveal. Doop. And doop. Basically an empty level. Oh well. Fishing for crits. Jeritza really isn't feeling the crits today, so I end up using the brave bow again. And we convoy the Giant Shell. I should really use it on someone other than Byleth, since she's indestructible anyway, but I'm much to lazy to figure out the optimal usage. So it's going on Byleth. Doop. Poke. Dance. You know something isn't threatening when it can't even ORKO a caster. (I mean, aside from Marianne....) Exp farming. End of turn 10. Everyone in range of the monster can survive a round with it, so we don't really need to kill it ASAP. The monster ends up attacking Edelgard, probably because Jeritza is tankier and everyone else both can survive and counter attack. Over at Byleth's side the three monsters try to attack her, although I'll be skipping the other two screenshots. A wolf aggro'd towards us and is in range to eat Marianne, now. Byleth flies bottom left and lights a Torch. So probably something like 5 monsters other than the boss, and the boss will probably get aggro'd due to proximity this turn. Exp farming. Some cleaning up over here before we handle the next wave of monsters. Doop. Topping off. Leonie getting ready to take an enemy phase combat. Dancing for stats. And everyone gets next to Leonie. End of turn 11. Some wolves were spawned as reinforcements, I believe, so it's time to crowd control the boss while we break all their barriers for Wootz. Not sure why this guy attacked Byleth at melee range. Leonie was 3% dead, which is annoying considering her Luck was buffed by Special Dance, meaning ordinarily this guy would have even higher crit on her. First move of player phase, Byleth flies close enough to the main team to assist if necessary. Doop. Doop. And doop. Another x3 Wootz drop, which is great. A crit lands, so this guy explodes. Dance for exp farming. Topping off. Exp farming. Ditto. A Physic because why not. And Jeritza lights a Torch for us. The boss still isn't aggro'd, interestingly enough. According to the wiki the wolf reinforcements are tied to him getting aggro, or turn 10, but it seems like the reinforcements spawning doesn't actually aggro the boss. So if you play the map slowly you can kill everything else without aggroing the boss. Nobody was in range to take enemy phase combats, so we start player phase off with Byleth breaking some barriers. (In retrospect I should've saved her gambit to crowd control the boss, since we don't have Bernadetta to keep the boss pinned with Encloser. Canto, and we also see a lot more wolves where that one came from. Edelgard pokes a wolf. The boss plays his aggro message, but we're pretty much in the mop up stage anyway. Canto to safety. Fishing for crits & breaking the last of this guy's barrier. Cheers. Doop. Leonie Cantos over here and Dorothea dances Edelgard. Stride so that Edelgard has the mobility to reposition Jeritza and get out of enemy range afterwards. Reposition for Jeritza. We move around a little, and Linhardt lights a Torch. The boss seems to be impeded by terrain, so despite his 4 movement he can't attack Linhardt. End of turn 13. Boss moves towards us and the wolf gets a free smack on Jeritza. At the start of player phase, Byleth flies over here and uses a Torch from Convoy. Leonie grabs the boss's aggro with her gambit. And we start working on the wolves, which are higher priority, thanks to the Wootz Steel. Although the boss has so much hp that it'd be hard to kill him to skip having to fight these guys anyway. Doop. One hp bar down. Getting Jeritza a pretty great level. He does unironically need Dex and Luck, though, thanks to his crit and accuracy issues. He Cantos over here to scout for more things coming from the right. Like, say, that one. (We don't really need to kill non-Wolves, though, since their drops are pretty bad and exp doesn't really matter---we have enough stats already to beat the last map without issues.) Breaking the last of this guy's barrier. For a third 3x Wootz drop. Canto. Marianne attacks because why not. Doop. And dead. A dance for Shamir. And she breaks one of the boss's barriers, Cantoing 1 square to the left afterwards. End of turn 14. It's hard to tell how many wolves are left on the map, but we'll want to kill at least the one we see right now. This combat is pretty dangerous, not only due to the 3% crit, but also because if the Wolf to our right immediately gets to move after being aggro'd it has the mobility to reach Leonie and kill her. Instead it stays in place and attacks Jeritza, which is interesting. We Warp Dorothea forward so she can use her Gambit---we're running low on gambits at this point. That's the wolf taken care of for a turn. And also a Wootz Steel. Doop. 5x Umbral is alright, because we can sell it for a nice chunk of change. The boss is strong enough to OHKO a lot of our units, so we get our free hits in while we can. Basically an empty level, but whatever. One hp bar down. Accuracy levels don't really matter for Annette since she uses wind spells anyway, which tend to be pretty accurate to begin with. The wolf's barrier is broken, so there's no reason for Byleth to hold back. And it gets Caspar a pretty great level. We Canto over here. It seems like the wolf above the one Byleth just smacked is one of those that started on the map---and it also seems like aggroing the boss doesn't aggro them---so we don't need to worry about it in terms of people dying. Bigger issue is this guy, although for this turn we're fine thanks to the boss being stunned and Leonie being fine to take a hit. A crit happens, so this wolf's dead. Smacking the boss. Ditto. It's missing Luck to be perfect, but it's still great. Doop. End of turn 15. We'll want to break the (presumably) last wolf's barrier before killing the boss, but the other two demonic beasts don't matter as much. Enemy phase combat. Ditto. This combat breaks Leonie's Killer Bow+. So we swap her to her Steel Bow+ before having her aggro the boss with a gambit. Barrier breaking. Ditto. Canto. Barrier & hp bar. Not having Strength is unfortunate, but at least Shamir actually cares about Speed. Also level 30 so she can go Falcon now. One more for the pile. Leonie's on tanking duty, so she needs to be full hp. Fishing for a crit. Didn't happen (although Lysithea did proc her Crest), so Jeritza finishes things off. Canto. And Byleth lands a pair of crits to finish this guy off. She Cantos over here to deal with the other Demonic Beast. Exp farming. B+ Authority, although I don't think there's any A rank battalions Linhardt cares about, so more Authority levels don't really matter. Dance. More exp farming. End of turn 16. I'm too lazy to sweep the map in case there's another wolf, so once we're done with the one we see it's time to murder the boss. Enemy Phase combat. Got to love the 3% chance to lose a Divine Pulse. One of the shots crit, so the boss goes down to 2 hp bars left. And this guy whiffs an AoE. We Warp Lysithea forward because she still has her AoE gambit ready. Interestingly, if you try to warp to an occupied tile, it refuses to go through. (Rather than, say, just putting you to the closest tile.) Fishing for crits. A single crit happens, so the guy's down to below half. Canto. Only a single crit rather than getting both, so the boss keeps its hp bar with 3 hp left. Another Canto. (People are coming over because Resonant Lightning is pretty inaccurate, so Lysithea needs the support bonuses.) Monster Breaker for maximum accuracy, and the boss goes down to its last hp bar. The hp bar gets Edelgard a great level, pretty much only missing Luck. And Edelgard Cantos over here so Lysithea can use her Lightning. (Really only Edelgard's support mattered, though...) And that's the last of the loot we care about on this map. Doop. Leonie flies over to break an hp bar for exp. Why not. And Byleth does Byleth things to the boss. Can't be assed to kill everything for the exp---although we could have, if we positioned better so we have another turn after this one---so I dance Byleth to kill the boss now. Doop. And Annette got MVP, I guess because of all the kills I fed her. Doop. Doop. Edmund Troops is a B rank battalion with 5 Atk, 5 Mag, 40 Hit, 2 Def, 2 Res, and 7 Charm. The gambit is Flash-Fire Arrows---basically just an upgraded Assault Troop. If you're grounded and need accuracy it's pretty alright, but nothing special. 40 Hit is the highest in the game for a battalion, and its mixed offensive stats means that both physical and magical units can use it for stats. (Probably only Bow Knights ever need that much Hit, though.) We also got the Blutgang, a melee range magic weapon. If we got this in part 1 it'd be interesting, since if we got it earlier we can let magically inclined units hang out in physical classes for mobility while using magic weapons for damage. At this point it's a bit to late, though, between the fact that mages are probably at the point of turning into mage cavalry (meaning no need to be in a physical class for mobility, unless you really want the 8 Movement from Paladin\Falcon Knight) and that skill slots are tight enough that Sword Prowess might be costly to run. Marianne does get a 10MT Cavalry (and Dragon) effective combat art, though. Too bad you only get 6 uses out of it a map, otherwise it'd be pretty good for some emergency exp grinding against Paladins and Wyverns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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